Eyes of Argus

That was what I meant, Zolobo.

The colors are immaterial. While the machine is active, it should seem active (motion, blinking lights, flashing colors, etc). When you shut it down, it should stop showing signs of activity. The colors don't matter as long as the active sprites look more alive than the inert ones. Anyway, the mission rewards of the Abduction objects are as follows, then: Escaped Teleporter: no reward (if you let them all escape, you get a default country score of "terribad") Destroyed Teleporter: X country bonus per pod attached. Disabled Teleporter: X country bonus per pod attached, and Y alien alloys/alenium. Destroyed Pod: -X country bonus. Something like that?

Interesting concept, but imo too big a disconnect from the rest of the game. The whole point of Xcom is grooming and improving your soldiers and equipment, and switching to a whole new cast of characters for one mission doesn't really jive with that. Perhaps a better execution of this would be a timed "defend the base" mission. The xenonauts arrive and help the local forces defend the location for X number of turns until the aliens give up. It could differ from a terror mission in that the map is smaller (possibly indoors) and instead of running around hunting for the aliens you just have to wait for them to come to you. May be too similar to normal base defense missions, though.

Glad you like it. Some further thoughts/questions about implementation, though... How would you shut down a teleporter as opposed to destroying it? Not saying I dislike the idea, just wondering how you would implement it gameplay-wise without making the mission type even more complicated? The more I think about my idea, the more I wonder if there's actually a good and simple way of pulling it off. What happens if you disable a teleporter, but destroy some of the abductee pods attached to it? Do you get partial credit? Is killing an abductee who you know you can't save a good or bad idea? Maybe it would be best if the teleporter and pods were combined into a single (large) map object?

This. This is one thing I loved about Firaxis' terror sites, even though they took it to an extreme.

A little late to this party, but how's this for an Abduction mission reward system. Throughout the map, there are two or three teleporters, each with several pods full of abductees attached. When the timer runs out, all of the teleporters engage and the mission ends. The question is how many of the teleporters you can disable before then. The more you stop, the greater your reward in both recovered materials and political support. For instance: Destroy no teleporters: mission failed, the country lowers your funding, go drink pee. Destroy one teleporter: recover X alienium and alloys, the country's funding level is unchanged. Destroy two teleporters: recover 2X alienium and alloys, the country's funding level is slightly increased. Destroy three teleporters: recover 3X alienium and alloys, the country's funding level is significantly increased. This way, you don't HAVE to hurry through the mission and lose all your dudes, because stopping even one teleporter will at least prevent you from losing anything; the country is satisfied that you at least made a difference, even if they aren't thrilled. If you want to take more risks though, you can potentially get much greater rewards. Not sure if destroying the pods rather than letting them be abducted should help or hurt you, though...

Misery? Aren't they getting tons of preorders and stuff?

Can we expect to see Xenonauts 2: Menace from the Ocean?