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TrashMan

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    New events and mission types

    in Xenonauts-2 General Discussion

    Posted

    Yah, that would work well.

    I did start with the assumption that most of the troops moved away from the UFO for 2 reasons:

    1) You don't really want to launch such a mission if an entire enemy army is  so close

    2) If significant friendly forces are present, players might end up killing all the aliens instead of running

    The way I see it, more enemies coming in will force the player to retreat.

    New events and mission types

    in Xenonauts-2 General Discussion

    Posted

    You can often do quite powerful stuff with simple tools and some ingenuity - I say this as someone who made many a missions and scenarios for various games.

    Sometimes tiny details and stuff that feels pointless can make a difference between a bland mission and an atmospheric one.

     

    The biggest hurdle might be the AI, as it has to act properly to accomplish it's goals.

     

    Some of this set-ups are actually quite simple. For example

    "A Large UFO has landed in the city and deployed troops. The local forces are attempting to deal with it, but this time we will not be assisting them. Instead, we're going to use this opportunity to storm the UFO and grab valuable items, sabotagining it in progress. The enemy will most likely call it's troops back, so we have a short time window before we're overwhelmed."

    You start outside of a huge UFO. When you breach it, a timer starts and after a few turns new enemies will spawn at the specific edges of the map. Inside the UFO you have things you can grab (for research bonus and points) and things you can destroy (for points). Naturally, packing some C4 would be a good idea for this mission.

    To win you have to simply have to retreat back to the dropship/extraction point after doing some damage/taking something.

    • Like 1

    New events and mission types

    in Xenonauts-2 General Discussion

    Posted

    20 hours ago, Ninothree said:

    I think with missions you need to make the objectives varied otherwise there isn't much point. Almost every mission in XCOM:EU suffered from this fault. They were all variations on 'Kill all hostiles' with the occasional optional 'save the friendlies'. So if you tweaked some of your ideas above then they could really shine. For example, stopping an abduction might involve recovering the civilians and retreating. Or the sabotage mission could involve going to certain locations on the map and defusing bombs or carrying away vital assets (or planting bombs and stealing assets if you are doing the sabotaging).

    That's the whole idea.

    For the abduction, the aliens wouldn't fight to the last man, but rather retreat to the UFO if things went badly and the mission would be over. The players task is to rescue as many people as possible. The alien would try to run away with as many as possible. Saving everyone should be almost impossible, since the aliens would run. You'd have to damage the UFO engines so they can't lift off, and that wouldn't be easy - the clock is ticking and you'd need plenty of firepower for that.

     

    Convoy would be assisting friendly forces into breaking the alien attack. Goal is to save as many firendlies as possible. Aliens would ran away/retreat to the edge of the map and retreat if you kill enough of them.  I always find aliens fighting to the last xeno when they don't have to silly (unless they are a hive mind/robot).

     

    Sabotage would be bomb defusal/elimination. Mission failure might injure/kill some of your xenonauts, depending on where on the map they are (for example, the if the aliens blow up the dam or oil tanks, xenonauts that are close are unlikely to survive.)

     

    Crash-and-Grab might be attacking an alien base/stronghold/big craft, with the explicit purpose of stealing something (or rescuing someone), then retreating - as there might be too many aliens for you to take it out fully. It's more of a stealth mission.

     

    Frankly, the concelment/stealth mechanics of X-Com2 are the best thing about NuCOM

    • Like 1

    Fire support from landed craft

    in Xenonauts-2 General Discussion

    Posted

    The transport really shouldn't be a controllable unit during ground combat, I see it more as a special power that can be invoked.

    But, as you say, if it can take damage... then you could make an invisible object that represents the transport flying high above. Aliens might take pot-shots, "damaging" it. If it takes enough damage, it will fly higher, removing the possibility of ground support AND costing time and money to repair after battle.

    Faction System and Other Ideas

    in Xenonauts-2 General Discussion

    Posted

    I see DEFCON and military strength as opposites - the stronger the US gets, the more wary USSR would become, and vice-versa.

    Obviously, you will need independent tracking of relations and military for big power blocks/countries. I can't see a simple way of doing this, if you want any depth to the system.Countreis should act differently depending on their military power, DEFCON status, relation towards another country, relation towards Xenonauts and their assessment of alien threat. Quite a few variables to track for each country.

     

    What about countries that weren't part of the two blocks?

     

    But what about the aliens? Are they too weak? How can the alien keep their secrecy if they fly around with UFO's and conduct terror raids? I can see no way for them to maintain secrecy for more than a few days. Why aren't they deploying the best stuff they have from the get-go?

    Are they just the vanguard, preparing for the arrival of the main force? Frankly, this makes more sense to me then being secret.

     

    New events and mission types

    in Xenonauts-2 General Discussion

    Posted

    Some missions/sites should be generated regardless of air missions. The Aliens have infiltrators/sympathizers. There's plenty of crazies on the is planet, so there's bound to be some who would work for the aliens, knowingly or not. Religious fantaics, cultists, people who were duped, etc..

    So missions/events:

    SABOTAGE - enemies will try to destroy damage valuebale infrastructure - damn, electric plants, oil refineries, roads, bridges, etc..

    ABDUCTION - alines will try to capture a few civilians and flee

    DATA TRANSFER/RECOVERY - enemies will try to transmit information to aliens

    CONVOY - friendly military convoy under attack

    BASE - friendly military air base under attack?

    ESCORT - escort a dignitary

    ASSASSINATION? - kill a compromised dignitary

    CARGO INTERCEPT - try to stop an enemy weapon/material shipmnet

     

    EVENTS might include sabotage in your own base - radar installations might go off-line temporarily, research/production might be lost of halted as equipment/data is damaged, personnel might get injured, false data might sent (a mission that's a while goose chase or an ambush) - however, these events would become rarer the more times they happen, or would have a limit to how many times tehy cna happen.

    Fire support from landed craft

    in Xenonauts-2 General Discussion

    Posted

    Fire support sounds good. The dropship could lift off once the troops disembark and dissapear, loitering in the air above. You can call it back to land AT THE SAME SPOT at any time.

    You can also go with the new X-Com way of grappling up/down via rope/crane, without having the actual dropship land on the ground. This also mean you can call it in to "land" (hover above) on different locations.

    There are many possibilities:

    - equipping it with a gun allows you to call in fire support (there has to be an associated cost, a limit or a cooldown. Possibly all 3.)

    - equipping it with sensor equipment allows better view of the battlefield and alien detection

    - equipping it with a medivac module increases the chance for troops to be criticialy wounded rather than die.

    • Like 1

    Dear Goldhawk

    in Xenonauts-2 General Discussion

    Posted

    The tiers were just an example.

    As for why pulse lasers would be more effective - the pulse effect? More energy delivered in a burst, and the shock effect?

     

    A comprehensive armor and limbs/body scheme would add to the depth of the game and produce more interesting scenarios and heroic stories.

    In X1, there was little difference between a heavily injured xenonaut and a full health one. Here, the difference would be visible and would affect tactical decisions.

     

    And it's not even that difficult to implement - it's 3D, so shot direction is easily calculated. All you need is to define body parts and how likely they are to be hit depending on surface area - and you can go even further by chance to hit a body part depending on facing(if you're to the left of a guy and are shooting him, chances are you're gonna hit his left arm and it's almost impossible to hit his right arm) Let me give you an example using some butchered Rimworld code: 

      <BodyDef>
    <defName>Human</defName>
    <corePart>
      <def>Human_Body</def>
      <height>Middle</height>
      <depth>Outside</depth>
      <parts>
        <li>
          <def>Torso</def>
          <coverage>0.5</coverage>
          <HP_percent>0.5</HP_percent>          
          <height>Top</height>
          <depth>Outside</depth>
        </li>
        <li>
          <def>RightArm</def>
          <coverage>0.05</coverage>
          <HP_percent>0.2</HP_percent>             
          <height>Top</height>
          <depth>Outside</depth>
        </li>        
        <li>
          <def>LeftArm</def>
          <coverage>0.05</coverage>
          <HP_percent>0.2</HP_percent>             
          <height>Top</height>
          <depth>Outside</depth>
        </li>

        <li>
          <def>RightLeg</def>
          <coverage>0.05</coverage>
          <HP_percent>0.3</HP_percent>             
          <height>Top</height>
          <depth>Outside</depth>
        </li>
        <li>
          <def>LeftLeg</def>
          <coverage>0.05</coverage>
          <HP_percent>0.3</HP_percent>             
          <height>Top</height>
          <depth>Outside</depth>
        </li> 
      </parts>        
  <BodyDef>

     

    The beauty of this is obvious - you can go autisctically deep with this, adding internal organs, specific fingers, etc... The toughenss of each body part can be defined in may ways - as percentage of soldier HP (tougher soldiers have stronger limbs too) or a fixed value, or every part would have the maximum HP value the soldier has

    Within this, you could also define functions of body parts - a simple addition like: <affects>mobility</affects> and <affects>carry</affects> added to a leg would mean that leg injury would reduce both mobility and carry capacity.

     

     

    So now instead of Pvt. Bob being hit twice and still running a marathon, we have private Bob who's armor has been breached and lost use of an arm and has a heavily burnt leg. He shoots his rifle one-handed as he limps to cover, drop it since he can't hit jack s***, and kills the alien with a grenade/pistol.

     

     

    Note that this would also cause players to have secondary teams and replacements out of necessity - not only does healing take time, but wounded units simply do not perform well. Normally, people would bring soldiers with 50% health on missions, but give them heavy armor or use them as pack mules. But now you have a solider that is limping so is slowing everyone else down, can't carry as much or isn't as accurate until he recovers.

    • Like 1

    Dear Goldhawk

    in Xenonauts-2 General Discussion

    Posted

    I enjoyed Xenonauts 1 immensely, but for Xenonauts 2, have the following:

     

    - soldier inventory similar to JA2 (specific slots)

    - weapon attachment (like in JA2)

    - friendly troops and missions involving them

    -  localized soldier damage. Mangled arm that reduces aim, mangled leg that reduces movement, etc..

    - to tie with the above, a comprehensive armor scheme (front torso, rear torso, head, left/right arm and leg). Each body part has it's own armor value and armor HP.

    - more organic weaponry - different weapon types behaving differently, rather then being clear tiers. So plasma has short range, but is powerful and deals splash damage.Lasers are accurate but not very powerful. Kinetics are relaiable and offer high RoF.

    So no tiers that go kinetic-laser-plasma, but rather technological progression within a tier. For example:

    TIER1:

    - continuous lasers (your basic beam. Since it's almsot impossible to miss, the %to hit affects damage done. "Will I hit it" becomes "how long did I keep the beam on the enemy?" as the enemy tried to dodge)

    - basic kinetic weapons (the "research" is actually searching for and selecting the best weapons that are available in the world at the start of the game. "Hey Xenonauts, we found that the HGK-416 is the best suited, sop ti will replace your M-16's's)

    TIER2:

    - pulse lasers (mechanically, works the same as a gun. Think lasrifle from WH40K: DoW)

    - advanced kinetic weapons (new guns, more modern look, better stats)

    - basic plasma (prone to overheating, bulky)

    TIER3:

    - UV(purple)/X-ray(blue) lasers (better stats, more modern look)

    - hypervelocity kinetics (coilguns/railguns)

    - advanced plasma

    - advanced kinetic munitions (HEA, HEAP, etc.. rounds)

    • Like 1

    That Which Sleeps - Kickstarter

    in Off-Topic

    Posted

    Backed it even tough it's unlikely I'll ever finish that game.

    I SUCK at playing bad guys. I have practically never managed to finish a game playing one.

    Now if you were force of good (ancient spirit, angel, weak, forgotten god, etc..) and have to do reverse (try to steer nad influence hereos nad ings and events to stop the Old Ones) that would be epic...for me at least.

    Modded Let's Play - sign up here!

    in Off-Topic

    Posted

    Operation Endgame is a go.

    We launched a final assault on the alien dreadnought in an attempt to assasinate the High Preator.

    It was a one-way ticket... unless we destroy the two power cores, which will trigger the emergency protocol and enable escape pods. But those cores are defended and require a de-tour. And reapers from the lower decks are coming.

    I recorded the mission, but the game crashed at the very end, after the result screen.

    It seems to have messed up the recording, so I might have to re-do the mission. Trying to covnert the footage now and see if it will play.

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