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This might be kind of off-topic, but it could be pretty amusing playing as aliens against AI Xenonauts.

The player (as the Alien Overmind) would primarily use the Geoscape to launch scouts as they come available (which, from the flavor text, we know will be at a pretty slow rate) and look for good targets to send fighters after. Once the Overmind discovers that Xenonauts are hunting him, he would then use the process of elimination to try and pinpoint the Xenonaut base, and try to wipe it out.

Can you imagine how fun it would be to launch a Terror mission and harass the puny humans for a while, and then try to set up an ambush on the Xenonauts as the Chinook approaches?

Mostly just a pipe-dream. But still. Sounds like fun to me!

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Hehe I think that was mentioned before in the FAQ, they don't have any current plans on making a mode where you can play as the aliens as they think it would be far too easy.

I think it would make a great post-game option though, have a base of surviving aliens to start off with and have to rebuild your forces and launch attacks on a fully upgraded X-com protected earth, multiple bases across the globe to take down or cities to destroy/pillage for resources/human abduction.

Maybe someone can mod it in later, but it would be pretty fun, at least how I am imagining it.

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I think the largest obstacle to playing the alien side (aside from time, as it is essentially a completely different game) is that it's hard to consolidate how the aliens work from a player playing the standard campaign with how to still make it worthwhile and challenging game from an alien campaign point of view.

For example how would you initiate ground combat? By allowing your scouts to be shot down by the Xenonaut organisation and then allow them to try and retrieve your crash site? That way you wouldn't be able to keep your team from one UFO to another or level them up.

You can't really progrss that much in tech. Compared to the human side the aliens techtree would be rather limited. I guess you could somehow progress in the type of aliens you are allowed to send or something. But that would again work against leveling a team up like you do in the human campaign.

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For example how would you initiate ground combat? By allowing your scouts to be shot down by the Xenonaut organisation and then allow them to try and retrieve your crash site?

No no no. The scouts are used to locate good targets for the fighters, corvettes, etc., to go strafe or assault.

The alien side of the game wouldn't have to be as in-depth as the Xenonaut side. The player (as the Overmind) would need to do some management of the space-fleet to get the various craft set up for flight in the atmosphere. And perhaps the player is not the Fleet Admiral of the entire force, but a commander who has to prove his effectiveness through successful strafing and terror missions in order to access the higher-tier xenos for further missions.

(Also, scouts could always land and just try to abduct civilians and cows and stuff.)

Just look at how the alien AI already works in the game. Then construct an interface to let the player do that same kind of stuff.

Really, at least initially, the alien player would want to avoid Xenonaut territory. There's a whole world to get easy kills on. Your alien troops could certainly level up as the complete successful missions. And you know how one of the Xenonaut victory options is holding the UFO for 5 turns? The xenos themselves could just need to hold out for 15 turns or something before a rescue ship could come scoop them up.

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So the alien side is NOT to revolve around the core of the game? There is no incentive at all for starting up ground battles?

I'm skeptical about this concept. it doesn't seem like it will work out as a lot of small issues are terribly hard to resolve. The end result wouldn't be coherent without fixing those issues.

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Running the Aliens off the top of my head...

Adjust ships to cope with atmosphere. At elast a few topics here to allow larger craft to operate.

Improve/Adapt weaponry - why should the humans be the only ones to improve?

Avoid detection & set up alien bases

Alien bases perhaps a prelude to something larger, like atmospheric conversion?

Bombing runs and evade your base location being known

research topics around converting flora and fauna into alien nutrients for breeding programmes. based on retrievals form ground missions.

Combat interceptors/local forces

Infiltration missions - Subvert local forces/funding nations into signing alien pacts

Research missions to capture all locals on the map.

Terror missions

Destroy asset missions - a map is a military base/radar station, a farm is a major food production hub

No doubt a few missions based on the game's back story - are they there for minerals? farming?

will those pesky xenonauts turn up?

locate Xenobases

Base attack missions on Xenobases

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The way they did alien research and resource management in UFO: The Two Sides (before it was taken down) was that the aliens had a main base on earth as well. Your “research” went into researching new kinds of aliens – you started off with Sectoids and had to work up from there. Cydonia would occasionally throw you a bung of resources, but almost everything had to be taken in missions.

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Additionally, (never having gotten too far in X-Com) wasn't there something in X-Com where countries would quit supporting the X-Com team and join with the Aliens?

Maybe the aliens in Xenonauts could be trying to sway nation gov'ts to quit funding Xenonauts and bow to their authority.

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I’ve been considering a narrative that would fit “Xeno Invasion” and I think I have something that fits given earlier comments by Oktober and thothkins. But to make it work you’d really need to commit to making a full-on game of it. There is a radical shift in design paradigm and narrative to consider if you want to have a Xeno Invasion.

We know that alien fleet is at least 3000 strong with room for more – far more. Someone needs to be in charge of all that – a Grand Admiral or suchlike. Now, even if that Grand Admiral is Mother Brain, it will still need other flag staff to effectively co-ordinate such a massive undertaking. Admirals. Vice-Admirals. Squadron Commanders. Etc. Etc. So that this “makes sense”, let us say there is a Grand Admiral and one Vice-Grand Admiral for every major race in the alien fleet. Even if the aliens are cloned on a production line, they will all want representation within the higher structure, and if they don’t get it there will be considerable grumbling. You won’t want a situation like the Covenant, where the Elites were paramount, but the Brutes were able to enact a coup and push the Elites from most-favoured status.

The player takes the role of the most junior of flag staff, attached to a Vice-Grand Admiral. You’re in charge of not very much, there’s a greater plan to adhere to, but you’re flag staff. You can act independently. This covers several points.

1) Start weak, grow strong. An key expectation of a Xcom-a-like game, but the Aliens are strong already. How do you simulate that, without making it look too artificial? By putting the player in the junior role, the progression to bigger and better things is natural, rather than forced.

2) Independence of action. Another key element of X-Com-a-like games. The player needs the freedom to screw up. Making the player flag rank means that the goals set can be much vaguer (“cause a country to turn to us”), setting the destination rather than the journey which should belong to the player.

3) Growth of your enemy. The aliens in Xenonauts can grow as the Xenonauts do, by bringing in larger ships, with higher classes of solider, armed with better weapons. But if the alien player is 100% effective in-game, how would the Xenonauts grow? Where would they get the tech from? If you make the player one of several commanders then the tech the Xenonauts acquires can be attributed to other, less competent commanders.

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The main change would be in altering the focus so that you didn't keep the same squad and improve it over time.

I would probably suggest that as your troops engaged the enemy the whole species improved slightly.

Your Ceasans would get generally better over time so that you would be able to have a guard in with your non-coms on the scouts.

Rather than promoting specific people you would open up slots on your ships for a higher rank.

You would also make equipment templates for ship types rather than equipping a certain squad.

It doesn't have to work the same way, it just needs to give you some options to play with.

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I'm not following why you wouldn't be able to use the same xenos across different missions and have them progress?

There does seem to be a racial component to how the aliens work. Caesans don't work with Sebellians don't work with Androns, etc. That might have something to do with it. As the player progresses, he'd move to commanding different species. I'm sure there's a clever way to work that in.

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I can see where Gauddlike is coming from both mechanically and thematically. Mechanically, the alien fleet has at least 7 different alien types. If squads developed and grew in the same way that Xenonauts did, then the player is more likely to stay with squads they have developed rather than try out new aliens, as new aliens interrupt character development. Furthermore, players would want the same squad in every mission (to encourage squad growth). Alien tryouts would then be limited to either new squad creation, or loss replacement. Depending on how effective Xenonaut interceptors are against small craft (and you’ve seen yourself how effective they are!) losses amongst aliens troops could be quite high!

Thematically, the Xenos aren’t the last, best hope for alienkind. They are a legion, millions-strong. By emphasising a class-based system, it reflects the impersonal nature of the alien hordes. You are Genghis Khan, directing your millions in a military venture that Alexander would weep if he could see it in it's complexity and scope.

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I'm not following why you wouldn't be able to use the same xenos across different missions and have them progress?

There does seem to be a racial component to how the aliens work. Caesans don't work with Sebellians don't work with Androns, etc. That might have something to do with it. As the player progresses, he'd move to commanding different species. I'm sure there's a clever way to work that in.

The more successful missions the player completes the more resources he is allocated.

The deal with racial coherency on ships: could simply be that each smaller vessel is only capable of creating a native atmosphere suited to sustain one race. While they can survive in each others, and earths, biotopes they work better in their own. Bigger ships can sustain a higher number of and more and environments.

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I, on the other hand, would prefer a xeno mode (that is unlikely to be made) to simply not feature recurring squad members at all. The progression of individuals is something the feeble huumaans concern themselves with. The progression of the invasion is what should be focused in such a mode as xeno.

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The more successful missions the player completes the more resources he is allocated.

The deal with racial coherency on ships: could simply be that each smaller vessel is only capable of creating a native atmosphere suited to sustain one race. While they can survive in each others, and earths, biotopes they work better in their own. Bigger ships can sustain a higher number of and more and environments.

Or the aliens speak different languages. While the commanders (being educated officer types) can speak to each other, field grunts have some difficulty in communicating; not necessarily crippling, but enough that it harms operational effectiveness to have mixed-species forces.

In terms of resources; if you had a resource cost to launch a mission that depended on the size of vessel (and the species used?), and regular incoming resources (like Xenonauts funding), then you would have to pick and choose your missions carefully to try to maximize your cost/benefit result. Sending a Dreadnaught to do a mission that could be handled by a Corvette would be too expensive. It also gives some incentive to trying to do missions understrength, as if you pull it off you will have spent fewer resources.

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A suggestion I made in the last thread of this type was for you to have access to a lot of stuff as the alien player.

It just takes time to assemble the forces you want and have them ready for missions.

For example at the start it may take you a full day to have a scout and basic crew made ready.

You could send out that scout as soon as you have it or you could wait until you have several and send them in a wave.

You may decide to prep a corvette and the strongest crew you have access to instead.

That could take five days though so you can decide if you want to send out five weaker ships and hope that the earthlings haven't progressed far enough to possess sufficient force to take all of them out before they can accomplish their missions or you can send out a larger one that is more likely to succeed but can only undertake a single mission.

As you get successful missions under your belt you have more reputation within the fleet so can assemble forces faster.

You also have access to better crews (soldiers instead of non-coms, access to Andron crews, heavy weapons etc) and larger ships.

Later it may only take you two days to prep that same corvette and crew or five days for a dreadnought and a superior crew.

It avoids having currency in a way because time is your currency.

If you have an alien high command breathing down your neck and your reputation drops the longer you hold off missions, as well as for failure, then you can't just sit back preparing an overwhelming battleship force.

You would not have access to them until late in the game and even then if you held off your attack too long the high command may revoke your ability to requisition the craft you were relying on.

Once you build your next wave of ships you can set missions, either individually or auto allocate depending on ship class.

Terror ships would automatically go for a random city in the drop area unless you tell them otherwise, fighters would form squadrons and perform air superiority or escort missions etc.

Ground missions would be terror missions, base assault and defence, defending downed crew until they can be picked up etc.

Bases you build would increase your reputation while they are active, you would need to keep them supplied though.

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