I suggest more special/scripted missions

[Lightzy]

Like you have the town-terror thing, the base defence, and the final mission..

Well, why not have more types or even absolutely unique missions?

For example

1) a mission where you have to escort villagers out of a raided town

2) a mission to explore a hidden cave where ancient human-kind recorded contact with aliens, to search for some information that could help you defeat the aliens

3) a cooking competition (a la pizza tycoon) against various alien race commanders

4) a mission to raid a special type of alien base where humans are experimented on to rescue some ULTRA ELITE, HUGE PSY-RATING humans which the aliens have captured for study

5) a mission inside an egyptian pyramid or aztec .. er.. something

6) a mission to machu-pichu

7) STEALTH MISSIONS! To install a computer virus on an alien ship/base computer, UNDETECTED.

8) A mission to wobbly bobbly boop

[NoIdidnt]

(6) or puma poonku <(sp)

(8) yep. what he said!

[anotherdevil]

Are any except suggestion 1 serious? =p

[NoIdidnt]

Im kinda partial to (3)

umm..

or something.

Well..

But i would like to see some special missions that grant you new/specialized research.

Edited March 7, 2012 by NoIdidnt

[Gorlom]

Sounds like something that would show up in a mod or an expansion imo.

[NoIdidnt]

Sounds like something that would show up in a mod or an expansion imo.

yep!

[Talrea]

3) a cooking competition (a la pizza tycoon) against various alien race commanders

Im kinda partial to (3)

COOKIE BAKING CONTEST???

(could be ground attack missions against landed ufos (not crashed ones, but ones doing a alien mission, and you catch them groundside), or ones to kidnap a specific alien (captains of larger ufos or bases etc) )

anyway back to the subject ... cookies... omnomnom

[Lightzy]

Well you get the point.

Missions that come up once in a while to make the game better, less formulaic, more intriguing.. and to stave off the problem which has been complained about before --- how to make missions less repetitive.

I bet you guys can think of some awesome "serious" stuff.

1) a special mission to a unique alien research base that grants you a unique piece of powerful equipment that is impossible to reproduce

2) a mission to the north pole, to sanitize a compound where an extraordinarily dangerous alien life-form is found ("The Thing".. seen it???)

[Gorlom]

All I'm thinking is that Aftermath tried this and had only 1 or 2 prescripted missions (iirc)... Too few missions and it's just a dissapointment. To many and its too much work. In this case i think "enough" and "too many" are the same thing. At least if we are expecting it to be included at release.

How many % of the missions do you think the scripted versions need to be to not cause people to wonder why it was included at all.

Edited March 7, 2012 by Gorlom

[Lightzy]

Well the original X-COM had 3

mandatory as part of the plotline

---> capture a captain, capture a commander (in a base), final mission

Here you COULD expand the plotline to include a couple more interesting and possibly yes, more scripted missions.

And also add as many as you want, say 350 unique missions, none of which are mandatory for you to take and not all appearing in one playthrough

like any other ground combat mission :>

In XCOM I think I'd have about a set number of ground missions I ended up doing per game.

It was possibly the base minimum to score enough points for funding and get enough alien equipment to sell so I'd be even richer.

I don't recall now an exact number but I don't think I ever went on more than maybe 20-30 ground missions in a single xcom game before the final one

[Gorlom]

Isnt the first 2 more "important optional objectives"? I don't recall that you failed the ground battle if you didnt capture the captain or base commander?

350 unique missions are a lot for an indie developer with large part of the team working only part time on the project. You seem like a very optimistic guy to me =)

Edited March 8, 2012 by Gorlom

[Gauddlike]

The balancing of those missions needs to be taken into account as well.

None of them can have a reward that is strong enough to make it essential to the game yet good enough to make them worth doing.

If they are no different to a normal mission reward then might as well do normal missions and save the dev budget

The capture captain/ commander from x-com was a frustrating mechanic as well.

If you didn't manage to get them then your research ground to a halt and you were unable to get further in the game until you managed to find them.

None of the missions should be game stoppers if you choose not to do it or if you fail it.

[Lightzy]

I personally loved that finally I have an OBJECTIVE to a mission, like capturing a captain/commander

as to 350, i was just saying a random number, it doesn't matter, just so long as its there, because unique missions help alleviate the repetitiveness of the ground mission process.

In fact I'm sure none of you would have said something like "none of the missions should be game stoppers f you choose not to do it" etc if the original X-COM had a bunch of fun missions.

what we all remember is the repetitiveness of the ground missions and so assume this is the future too and so that we should be able to not do any.

if it was fun, we'd WANT MORE

[Gauddlike]

The choice of which missions to undertake, and living with the consequences of that choice, is a big part of the game for me.

Adding missions that you HAVE to undertake and succeed at goes against that.

If you risk going after a battleship with a squad that is a little weak and fail then you need to recover from it.

If you just HAVE to reload and keep trying until it goes right it takes away from the game.

what we all remember is the repetitiveness of the ground missions and so assume this is the future too and so that we should be able to not do any.

if it was fun, we'd WANT MORE

None of that is true for me.

It is your personal opinion which, of course, you are fully entitled to.

However suggesting that all of us feel that way is incorrect.

I found that I could do as many of the ground missions, or as few, as I wished to.

I was not forced into doing any of the missions (except the final one) if I chose not to.

That gave me, as the player, control over my own game.

Being unable to progress because of the missions was unfortunate and should be avoided.

I feel that the secondary mission objectives planned will already add to the variation of ground missions.

Scripted missions could also be good fun but should be carefully balanced.

That doesn't mean that I am against them, just that they need to be thought out carefully.

[Lightzy]

What I'm saying is that if the missions were more engaging, you wouldn't be thinking "I can do as few or as many as I wish", because you'd just want to do them! because they're so fun and engaging

The fact that they were pretty much the same is what leads to the 'I can do as many as I wish' thing

nothing wrong with having more awesomer missions that u'd just want to do, so that it wouldn't even occur to you not to do it, just because it's so good and challenging and interesting. that's all I'm saying!

[Gorlom]

I think theese scripted missions you are asking for will make people feel "I can do as many as I wish.. and less of them the better" faster then the regular missions. At least the standard misssions are pretty much randomly generated maps, so they are all different.

A scripted mission will allways be the same, therefore you would need LOTS of them for variety. Realisticly the game designers hasn't got the chance to do enough scripted and carefully thought out missions without postponing the game for up to several years. Modders might be able to add a scripted map at a time, and reach a significant ammount faster. But they arent going to be balanced compared to each other and many might do maps on similar ideas.

Personally I don't see this working. You would probably have better luck with something along the line of secondary objectives

[Lightzy]

Yep you'd have a few for plot-advancement which are necessary like the final mission

And a lot more which are just for fun.

And a scripted mission will, unlike what you say, not play the same.

when have u ever seen a scripted mission play the same?

The final mission in xcom is a 'scripted mission' where you have to go from here to there, then to there, then to find something, then to find something else in a different map and kill it.

[Gauddlike]

And a scripted mission will, unlike what you say, not play the same.

when have u ever seen a scripted mission play the same?

The point in a SCRIPTed mission is that it follows a SCRIPT.

If that is not what it does then it is not scripted.

Maybe what you are trying to suggest is a mission with unique victory objectives?

[The New Romance]

I'd like special missions, be they scripted or with unique victory conditions. I do, however, realize that this means a lot of work. A better approach to the repetitiveness problem would probably be to have the usual randomly generated missions + some sort of "random wacky factor", that introduces additional and interesting victory conditions apart from "kill 'em all, take their stuff". I believe the game would greatly benefit if it expanded on X-COMs original formula wherever possible (by the way, where is the Kickstarter money printing machine to make all this affordable?).

[Gazz]

Scripted missions are a tall order if the actual missions are procedurally generated.

You'd have to script a mission for a map segment that it actually works with.

That limits the variance quite a lot. "Oh no, not the farmer couple barn again!"

Scripted missions are realistic in FPS or RTS where the player's movement / expansion is funneled in a certain direction by the level / geography.

More likely might be entire missions with different objectives where specific objective buildings are a key part of the map.

That way you can still use the lego map system for variance. Exactly what it was designed for.

Bolting secondary / scripted missions on top of the normal mission might well mean that the player is either completely overwhelmed by the normal plus secondary aliens or that the "other" mission is so trivial that it always gets done in passing.

[Gorlom]

The point in a SCRIPTed mission is that it follows a SCRIPT.

If that is not what it does then it is not scripted.

Maybe what you are trying to suggest is a mission with unique victory objectives?

Glad you cleared that up. His response made me so baffled I didn't know how to respond.

[Lightzy]

I think you might have been baffled because you're confusing 'scripted mission' with 'non-interactive-movie-film' or perhaps you've never played a scripted mission in a game

A scripted mission still gives the player all the freedom to achieve the 'scripted' objectives in various ways.

A Call of Duty mission, for example, is *very* scripted, and yet the player has the options of which guns to use, how to use them, where to go when, etc. It is still a game.

Also a warcraft mission is scripted. etc etc. It follows a script.

A scripted mission basically sets you objectives and various 'scripted events' which occur as you complete of fail certain objectives.

This is in order to give you a story to play through

I hope that clears up what I meant!

[Gorlom]

I think you might have been baffled because you're confusing 'scripted mission' with 'non-interactive-movie-film' or perhaps you've never played a scripted mission in a game

A scripted mission still gives the player all the freedom to achieve the 'scripted' objectives in various ways.

A Call of Duty mission, for example, is *very* scripted, and yet the player has the options of which guns to use, how to use them, where to go when, etc. It is still a game.

Also a warcraft mission is scripted. etc etc. It follows a script.

A scripted mission basically sets you objectives and various 'scripted events' which occur as you complete of fail certain objectives.

This is in order to give you a story to play through

I hope that clears up what I meant!

Correct me if I'm wrong but arent the levels in those games designed as opposed to randomly generated? Just because you have multiple options in how to complete a map doesnt mean it will keep feeling varied and fresh after a couple of playthroughs. If you play the same map a few times over you are going to eventually allways play it the same way, unless you have some incentive to play it differently (which I don't see working in this game since Chris said no to achivements). This is a really big problem for a game that practically relies on random generators. Scripted to me implies a level designer and static maps.

In case you are wondering what I'm talking about i'm going to recapp. First you reacted to my statement

A scripted mission will allways be the same, therefore you would need LOTS of them for variety.

with

And a scripted mission will, unlike what you say, not play the same.

when have u ever seen a scripted mission play the same?

To which I probably should have responded: "all the time." It's kind of the purpose of scripted missions, to play out the same. ie "following a script". Right here we its obvious we are talking about different things. I have no idea what you mean by play the same, especially not since you use those examples to rebuttal my statement.

I suggest to you that you abandoned the lable "scripted mission", since that is causeing you a whole heap of problems when explaining to us what it is you want. Start over. Go into detail and avoid useing the term "scripted".

PS. Bah I just know that the focus isn't going to be on furthering the conversation, but on defending the use of the term scripted =(.

Edited March 12, 2012 by Gorlom

[Akavit]

In computer games, a scripted mission refers to a mission that has custom code which fires at trigger points (such as a location or an event). I've done enough modding to have some experience doing such things. For example, one could setup a mission so that a certain script fires when a soldier enters the ufo (perhaps an alien starts self-destruct sequence). Another trigger could be set to run if the alien leader gets wounded (calls for reinforcements).

So no, scripted missions do not follow a script. They use scripts specifically written for the mission that fire events upon trigger activation. Whether or not they play out the same for each play-through depends upon how many non-linear triggers are incorporated into a mission. You have to think from the perspective of a programmer instead of a screenwriter.

I doubt that Xenonauts will feature more than a couple of these types of missions though. It's not because they'd get dull due to linear gameplay. The reason is because well-coded missions require a lot of custom code. Furthermore, in depth testing of non-linear scripted missions is very time consuming since every possible combination of events has to be tested.

Due to randomly generated maps location based triggers are unlikely to work well. Object based triggers that get randomly seeded into missions might be more viable however. While it's not quite the same as a scripted mission it would still add another element of interest in the game while keeping to the theme of random mission generation.

Perhaps a multilated cow that spawns into the mission that grants a special research project if recovered would be fun. Another could be having a high ranking national leader spawn into terror missions. Xenonauts could be informed at briefing that saving the leader will result in a higher score and a cash reward. Letting the leader die results in loss of reputation in that nation and a lower score. If the terror mission is in a capital the stakes are even higher.

[Gorlom]

I guess I have to conceed that my understanding of the term "scripted" might be flawed. But it doesn't neccissarily lessen the validity in my claims (for the same reasons as Akvavit mentions). At least not regarding Xenonauts.

Edited March 12, 2012 by Gorlom