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Modular UFOs - Discussion and Suggestions


kabill

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Ok, here's a second attempt at the Light Scout:

Without exterior walls:

GCSubmapEditor 2014-06-26 21-02-13-319.jpg

With exterior walls:

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Slight variant (slight extension at the front):

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I've gone for a more box-like design as per suggestions. I've left some same in the corners for diagonals or otherwise trying to add a bit of shaping, but it would be easy enough to alter that depending on what the exterior walls look like.

I've tried as best as possible to mix form and function. I've put in two single doors rather than double doors, as I think this works better with the small size of the UFO both aesthetically and defensibly. Pretty much all the possible cover spots for the aliens have got a clear LoF to the two entrances, but I don't think the props look odd where they are.

So, is this any better than the first attempt?

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Hmm you know what would be fun? Design an UFO with a single door... on the ceiling :)

Sadly, it's impossible as it's not possible to pass through ground tiles (this is pretty much what screwed my plans with FitH to have roof-breaches and required stupid work-arounds).

That said, you could do it with teleporters (I did contemplate making a UFO that could only entered with a teleporter. Kind of like the Light Scout from the OG).

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Sadly, it's impossible as it's not possible to pass through ground tiles (this is pretty much what screwed my plans with FitH to have roof-breaches and required stupid work-arounds).

That said, you could do it with teleporters (I did contemplate making a UFO that could only entered with a teleporter. Kind of like the Light Scout from the OG).

Yes, I'm sure there are ways to counter that. Don't know if you see the merit of tactical "variety" this would enforce on the players though - and I can imagine the initial reactions during the first encounter with such UFO.

EDIT: Evil grin.

Edited by KevinHann
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Having trouble with the Scout. Firstly, I've got a range of possible basic floorplans (which actually are all quite similar to one another, as it happens), based (loosely?) on Max's suggestions up-thread:

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Obviously these aren't the only possible ones, but I thought I'd get some feedback on the basic shape before I go to the trouble of filling them in.

The second issue is how to partition the UFO. Basically, I'm not sure whether to try more or less partitions. I reckon those designs above could comfortably accommodate 2-4 rooms. The more rooms, the more capacity there is for skirmishing between rooms. But it also divides the aliens up more. A lot of it comes down to what the AI can cope with (I'm about to have a quick test of the 1.07 UFO AI now), but I was wondering whether anyone has any thoughts about this.

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Chris, Goldhawk, MAKE THIS HAPPEN!!!! If any further work is done this is the kind of thing that needs to be in. Breaching a crashed UFO from a entrance other than the front door should definitely be something that's possible with mid to late game weaponry.

Kabill here is doing a GREAT job. Keep it up brother. This needs the MAXIMUM level of support we can get to make Xenonauts the best UFO invasion simulation around.

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So, looking back at those images this morning, the first and second ones look best to me, and I think I prefer the second over the first. The third and fourth look odd with the think mid-section to me, while the fifth is serviceable but maybe not fitting the general aesthetic as much.

I'm possibly thinking of side doors again, similar to the light scout. Still not sure about the interior partitions, though.

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I haven't read the full thread, but new UFOs would also require a map redesign (for the better). This is because UFOs are always crammed along the top edge of the map as their doors are always on the SE side, and there's no point being able to access the sides of the UFOs because they aren't destructible and can behave strangely with the tile grid.

Modular UFOs could have multiple entrances and could be attacked from any side. That means they could be put anywhere in the map, which would be cool.

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I haven't read the full thread, but new UFOs would also require a map redesign (for the better). This is because UFOs are always crammed along the top edge of the map as their doors are always on the SE side, and there's no point being able to access the sides of the UFOs because they aren't destructible and can behave strangely with the tile grid.

Modular UFOs could have multiple entrances and could be attacked from any side. That means they could be put anywhere in the map, which would be cool.

That's useful to know. Allows some additional flexibility in designs, if nothing else.

Also, out of wonder, is there code implemented for different UFO facings (a la the dropship submaps)? It looks like this was originally planned and then abandoned, but I'm wondering whether you got as far as adding the code to support it.

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Nope, but I'm sure it could be added easily by a community coder. But if they all had roughly the same footprint you could just randomise the maps in the folder anyway.

Yeah, I'd had the same thought about randomisation. If the maps were being redesigned that would work well enough.

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I'm playing around with the editor, but have some questions if I might PM kabill? I'm trying to start slow but can't seem to suss out how to make things work with the already available maps. Once I get that figured I can try my hand at some designing (I am a terrible sketch artist and have difficulty translating my ideas to coherent sentences).

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Ok, here's Scout 2.0:

Without exterior walls:

GCSubmapEditor 2014-06-27 21-33-52-070.jpg

With exterior walls:

GCSubmapEditor 2014-06-27 21-36-28-759.jpg

You'll note that I've gone for none of the ideas posted previously. I didn't quite like them, so I decided to have a go with something based on the classic Large Scout design from the OG.

Again, single-tile wide doors on either side of the UFO as entrances. The separation of the doors on opposite sides of the UFO forces you to split your squad if you want to take advantage of the multiple entrances, so there's a choice to be made about where to deploy your squad.

The UFO is also 'non-linear' in the sense that there's no end-point. Attacking one of the rooms therefore comes with the risk of being attacked from behind from the other (this might help counter door-spamming, too, since you risk being attacked from the other direction if you insist on camping outside the room your attacking).

Thoughts?

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You'll note that I've gone for none of the ideas posted previously. I didn't quite like them, so I decided to have a go with something based on the classic Large Scout design from the OG.

Again, single-tile wide doors on either side of the UFO as entrances. The separation of the doors on opposite sides of the UFO forces you to split your squad if you want to take advantage of the multiple entrances, so there's a choice to be made about where to deploy your squad.

The UFO is also 'non-linear' in the sense that there's no end-point. Attacking one of the rooms therefore comes with the risk of being attacked from behind from the other (this might help counter door-spamming, too, since you risk being attacked from the other direction if you insist on camping outside the room your attacking).

Thoughts?

They look brilliant. Multiple entrances is a good idea - I can 'werf from both sides. Multiple interior doors is nasty, it should introduce chaos into an assault.

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Ok, so, here's my first pass at the Landing Ship:

Ground floor, without exterior walls:

GCSubmapEditor 2014-06-27 23-10-18-503.jpg

Ground floor, with exterior walls:

GCSubmapEditor 2014-06-27 23-20-16-009.jpg

Top floor, with exterior walls:

GCSubmapEditor 2014-06-27 23-40-57-509.jpg

The design for this is based heavily on the design I did for Fire in the Hole. Mostly because I really like the balcony. As such, it's a bit different to the Light Scout and Scout I've done so far, since there's only a single entrance (and it's a bit of a death-trap). The central location of the teleporter also allows aliens from the upper floor to reinforce the ground floor quickly, while attacking up through the teleporter onto the top floor is dangerous as you're immediately surrounded.

I'm unsure whether I like the design or not. It's more or less linear like the existing maps, due to the single entrance and the command room as the final zone. That's arguably a flaw, since its less tactically interesting. But it's also a feature, because it should encourage some inventive solutions to get around.

For example, Buzzard armour (which you should be able to access before Landing Ships turn up) looks like it will be very helpful, as it will make attacking the top floor much easier using the balcony as an access point. Furthermore, I'm assuming that by the time landing ships turn up, the player will have suitable tools for creating their own access points into the UFO. Again, buzzard armour is useful here since you can immediately penetrate the top floor and take the balcony, which might help against any aliens defending the bottom floor there too. But even without buzzard armour, you would be able to penetrate the bottom floor of the ship to help secure it.

So while I have some reservations because of the linearity of the design, I do think that could be a good. This landing ship is a bit like a fortress, and should hopefully challenge the player to come up with some inventive approaches to assault it successfully. In any case, it also helps mix up the UFOs a bit, too. (This is part of the reason why I skipped to the Landing Ship, because when I was trying the Corvette it was basically turning into a slightly bigger Scout and I felt the need to go try something else for a bit instead.)

Is there a way to "get" the AI to guard both entrance rooms ?

Not directly. The AI basically takes care of itself and there's no sure way to influence it.

What I'm hoping - and this is in answer to Solver's point upthread - that I've put in a large enough array of good cover spots that the aliens will be placed with some level of randomness between missions. Ideally, sometimes they'd heavily defend one entrance or the other, sometimes be split, sometimes be further inside the ship instead, or whatever. But I can't say whether it will turn out like that in practice.

On that note, if I'm able to finish the Corvette over the weekend I might release the designs I've done so far in case people want to give them a playtest.

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It would be possible to do that to make them spawn and stay in the entrance rooms, yes. I'd not thought of that. However, there's no way that you could make them guard both doors at the same time.

I'm definitely tempted to try it out, though.

(Hmm - random thought: multiple iterations of the UFOs with different rooms set as the command room, so you never know which one's going to have the "boss" in.)

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The difficulty isn't keeping them in the rooms; the difficulty is getting them to split between the two rooms.

Basically, you can designate UFO tiles as "objective tiles" which is the default (all the UFO tiles are specified like this) and "command" tiles (with designate where the command aliens spawn and stick to). The command tiles could be used to get the command aliens to stick to the two entrance rooms, but there'd be no way to make the aliens guard both of the rooms simultaneously as they might decide they want to all move into one room or the other.

As for random submaps for UFOs: pretty much, yes. The idea I floated around in my last post was simply shifting the command room tiles without changing the layout (so, sometimes the command aliens will be on the bridge; sometimes in the engine room; or whatever). But mixing up the interiors in terms of their layout and contents is also possible.

Personally, I still like the idea of adding in some randomisation in the form of crash damage (i.e. what I did with ECS). But, especially with the larger UFOs, it would be quite cool to have them decked out for different missions. For example, the Landing Ship I've done is full of supplies and cargo, which is great for base construction missions and supply missions, but a bit silly when it comes to research missions or terror missions. So it would be cool to have an "attack" variant which looks a bit barracks like, and a "research" variant which has a lot of abduction-related props (autopsy tables, tubes, cows-in-jars, etc.)

I can even think of a workaround which would allow these different interiors to be tied to the specific missions they relate to, as well. In theory, you could set up several 'different' UFOs of the same type (LandingShip_Supply; LandingShip_Research; LandingShip_Attack) which all have the same stats and stuff, but are just used for the different missions.

It would be a bit of faff with the maps, as you'd need to place each of the variants on each maps. But if the maps were being redesigned/rejigged then that wouldn't necessarily be a problem.

(Can't decide if extreme randomisation is moving too far away from the original concept, though. Maybe better as a separate mod? Although if the work's being done anyway, and Chris doesn't object, I guess it would make sense to package everything together.)

Also: is the lack of comments telling me that the new designs are terrible a sign that they're not?

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