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Base spread and the reasons for.


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I'm still annoyed by the fact that my secret antartica base in original XCOM was wasted money :P

This wasn't necessarily the case. If you built a tech/research/training base without interceptors and didn't shoot any down UFO's close to that base there was very little chance of the aliens attacking that base. So this gave the advantage of not having to build defenses and keep soldiers at those bases.

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Yes that one is probably more likely to be associated with what thothkins wrote... But I like the rimmer song better.

big help guys, I still don't know which version of my post is the gibberish one and which is the readable one. :)

back to the Philip K Dick memorial psychiatric unit for me (and my other personalities).' nurse, another pill if you please...'

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I'd like to stay on topic, the issue Jean-luc raised is highly relevant.

Here's an idea (sorry if it has already been given). If terror mission were to damage reputation as long as they were not "resolved", this would urge the player to have several fire teams ready to strike all around the world. Or their could be some other timer based events on the geoscape, like allied base defense which would require a quick strike. However, the whole economy of the game would have to be reworked. You can't expect the player to have 5 chinooks and 40 soldiers ready and have him struggle with money.

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well, as long as it's highly relevant

The Chinook range at the moment does force the player into having multiple strike teams. I liked the untweaked Chinook range a bit better. It's a step up from EU in that it pushes you to do this quite early here, as it shows you the consequences by having lost missions.

To further this, I do think that an inability to perform ground missions should cause a loss of reputation for the Xenonauts. You gain through the successful interception, but lose when the local force have to bomb the site.

They have to destroy their own infrastructure and a loss of local life because your organisation was incapable of fully dealing with the consequences. If that sounds a little harsh then perhaps there is some balancing needed for the successful interception. You have after all shot down one of the 3000 which is something the local forces were unable to do pre game.

Interestingly, there's another thread about the simplification of games going on

I think having the player struggle with finances is a positive thing. It forces strategic choices. Having to sacrifice certain areas of development for others is a positive thing. Why should the player get everything they want on a plate? - cue remarks about the decline and fall of western society -

While some may think it's frustrating, I think they sometimes confuse the word with challenging, which is no bad thing for this sort of game.

It also shows that the alien forces are able to be smart about their own attacks. If they see their craft being stopped across a number of spheres of influence, then they will naturally choose targets beyond that. That adds to the challenge. Having stupid aliens that repeatedly throw themselves into the same heavily defended zone is simply a bit thick of them.

@ nemeo I wasn't quite sure what you meant by allied base defence. I don;t think you meant the normal base defense missions. Is this a protection of allied military installations?

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It also shows that the alien forces are able to be smart about their own attacks. If they see their craft being stopped across a number of spheres of influence, then they will naturally choose targets beyond that. That adds to the challenge. Having stupid aliens that repeatedly throw themselves into the same heavily defended zone is simply a bit thick of them.

You could get more fighters and scouting missions near your area of influence and more terror/abduction/whatever missions away from your operating zone.

The aliens would be sending some of their more combat oriented and scouting craft to look for you while concentrating their less combat ready craft on safer missions elsewhere.

That gives you a good incentive to have multiple bases in different areas.

If you throw in the risks with transporting goods via the transport plane (that can be destroyed) then it gives the player a choice.

They can choose to have a main manufacturing plant with risky transfers or spread the manufacturing out among the bases where it will be safer but less efficient.

The change of focus from the enemy shouldn't be too fast though.

It also shouldn't remove all juicy targets from people who want to stick with a single main base.

Over the course of a few waves they should gradually move some mission types (those with weaker craft) away from the centre of the crash sites you have made.

That might not reflect where your base actually is but it would be the only information they had.

At the same time they could send fighters and scouts towards this centre on air superiority and base hunting missions.

When you create a new base somewhere else you would be in amongst the pigeons again.

Changing how good the enemy are at doing this, and how quickly, would also make an interesting difficulty option.

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@ nemeo I wasn't quite sure what you meant by allied base defence. I don;t think you meant the normal base defense missions. Is this a protection of allied military installations?

Yes it is. Some time ago I had submitted the idea of national military bases helping the player in detecting ufos at the beginning of the game. Chris seemed to like this idea because it would make the beginning of the game more lively and more interesting but I don't know if he kept it or not. I doubt it since the louder voices here belong to xcom conservationists. However, if those bases were to exist, the player would have another reason to expand his reach and build more bases. It could also have generated new scenarios: the aliens infected the ranking officers of a military base with a mind controling parasite and the player has to kill them with minimal casualties among non infected soldiers (who will defend their officers). It would have added diversity in mission goals. It would made stunning weapons more useful.

Now wait for xcom conservationists. They're going to rush in here with forks and torches. I'm out of here.

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Not necessarily. These bases would be poorly equiped to fight against alien ufos. Their role would be to complement the player's radar coverage at the beginning, but if the player didn't place some bases of his own at chinook range they would easily fall to the enemy. The player would then lose reputation (and money) and the military support these bases provided during various scenarios (4 or 5 soldiers with regular weapons. Or a tank. Nothing overpowered, just a motionless party strong enough to hold a crossroad, a building or the player's droping point).

These bases could also establish a safety perimeter around nearby crash sites. These perimeters would lessen the penalty for letting an alien escape on the battlefield. Protecting these bases as long as possible would be important to defeat the aliens.

Sooner or later these allied bases would fall and the player would have to build his own base to compensate for the loss of radar coverage.

It's all about balance, really. Whether you put allied bases or not, if chinooks can go anywhere around the globe, there will be no point in building another populated base. If chinooks are a bit short on gas, these bases could take care of scout crash sites at the beginning of the game and defending them would be worthwhile. I would sure like this side goal.

Edited by Nemeo
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Now wait for xcom conservationists. They're going to rush in here with forks and torches. I'm out of here.

I really like my X-COm type bases. I like them a little too much. Practically, the first thing on Xenonauts I checked out were my base facilities.

So, I'd have to be a conservative voice on it. However, I've posted a couple of times about having parts of funding nations with assets. This would essentially split up the facilities such as Radar, aeronautics workshops, particle physics labs and so forth across the globe.

I was thinking of things like Area 51 (advanced military craft), MIT, CERN, Bolivian telescopes, British encryption and on and on like that. It would have to be a bit of a different interface for all that, but it spreads play across the globe. Military bases would also be part of that, as allied forces would presumably be targeted by the invasion.

So, conservative, but not adverse to thinking of other possibilities. These forums are pretty good for that sort of thing. So, no Frankenstein reruns here, although I did see footage of the Olympic Torch relay earlier. That had torch wielding villagers in it.

There was a military base in the stretch goal proposals that may well have fitted the sort of scenario you're looking for.

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Not necessarily. These bases would be poorly equiped to fight against alien ufos. Their role would be to complement the player's radar coverage at the beginning, but if the player didn't place some bases of his own at chinook range they would easily fall to the enemy. The player would then lose reputation (and money) and the military support these bases provided during various scenarios (4 or 5 soldiers with regular weapons. Or a tank. Nothing overpowered, just a motionless party strong enough to hold a crossroad, a building or the player's droping point).

These bases could also establish a safety perimeter around nearby crash sites. These perimeters would lessen the penalty for letting an alien escape on the battlefield. Protecting these bases as long as possible would be important to defeat the aliens.

Sooner or later these allied bases would fall and the player would have to build his own base to compensate for the loss of radar coverage.

It's all about balance, really. Whether you put allied bases or not, if chinooks can go anywhere around the globe, there will be no point in building another populated base. If chinooks are a bit short on gas, these bases could take care of scout crash sites at the beginning of the game and defending them would be worthwhile. I would sure like this side goal.

If they did not provide radar coverage or if it was extremely limited it sounds like a good idea. If it is meant to help you detect UFOs though I'm against it. I think being able to spot UFOs outside of your coverage/intercept range would diminish your radar and take away from the game.

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I suggested them as a way to make the beginning of the game more interesting. In other UFOs, radar coverage is so small when the game starts that you just hit fast forward and wait for ages for something to happen. There's nothing fun when you're in the black and you just wait for something to splash into your tiny spider web. The whole world could fall to the aliens and you wouldn't know it.

Allied radars could become less and less reliable as the game progresses. First they would have a decent detection efficiency and with time this percentage would diminish, boosting the need for xenonaut coverage. An advisor could warn the player about the fact that aliens are more and more difficult to dectect with standard military radars.

Anyway, I disagree with you Gorlom. Since these bases would disappear one by one, the gaps left in the radar grip would only force the player to compensate them by sending patrols or building a new base. It could even be fun to make the aliens take advantage of these gaps. No everytime of course, because it would be unbearable at one point.

Edited by Nemeo
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The current warning events system already lets you know which areas you should be patrolling in.

It lets you know that there are events occurring beyond your radar range and gives you an idea where to look.

Balancing how the spawns occur early on would also help to alleviate the quiet parts at the start of the game.

The main downside I see is that you would be able to see what was going on but be unable to do anything about it unless interceptor and dropship ranges were hugely increased.

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Anyway, I disagree with you Gorlom. Since these bases would disappear one by one, the gaps left in the radar grip would only force the player to compensate them by sending patrols or building a new base. It could even be fun to make the aliens take advantage of these gaps. No everytime of course, because it would be unbearable at one point.

And I dont agree with you :) I don't feel that allied bases radar ranges solves the problem. It creates a few more, among them the problem Gauddlike mentions. Your additional radarcoverage would make the news popups nearly obsolete, takeing away that aspect of the game.

I feel that there are other ways to balance the early game then takeing away the feeling of lonlieness and mysteriousness of what could be outside of the radar ranges. You loose the will to explore unknown areas as a player because you have alrady had radarcoverage there once... It becomes less of a priority. You aren't building up your power, you are rebuilding it. It makes it feel less important, less fun (for me atleast).

I fear that allied bases with large area radar coverage from the start (that dissapears with time) will be a change that will dissapoint and turn many X-com conservatists away from the game because it changes the feel of the game completly. The news popus should be sufficient for the purposes of knowing what is going on outside of your radar coverage. They tell you something happened, but is alot more obscure about it.

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