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New events and mission types


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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.

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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).

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STEAL - one faction salvaged/nicked an item/data/weapon/alien corpse from a crash site/terror mission/other factions transport/enemy base/Xenonauts and this has to be retrieved by force or quick-sneak-attack

PLANT EVIDENCE - to manipulate one faction against the other, Xenoanauts are bringing item/data/... to specific crash site/terror mission/...

INTERVENTION - Xenonauts intervene on a mission of a faction; example: capture an alien before special forces of one faction do. The other faction is also on the map and you have to get there before them.

RECON - Small team of Xenonauts (1-3 soldiers) have to spy on a group of aliens meeting high echelons of a faction/secret group to retrieve information

Edited by thixotrop
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More than this I'd love to see an abundance of missions of which you cannot do all (e.g. due to lack of ready soldiers or too much risk), as in Long War 2. Each should have a reward for you if you succeed and a reward for the aliens if you fail or do not attempt the mission. Of course, the risks and rewards should be relatively clear for the most part.

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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

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Yeah, I agree there's definitely scope to try some more advanced mission setups this time round. I don't feel we're far enough along yet to be scoping them out in detail but I'll happily look through this stuff again in a few months, assuming someone prods me.

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@Chris or any software developers, just the keep the ideas flowing in the right direction: what are the practicalities in coding advanced mission setups? I guess that designing interactions with map elements (like pressing switches or blowing up power cores) is easier than writing scripts for NPCs (like civilians or other factions). It would be interesting to know the practical limits of what the engine can do in ground combat.

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Depends heavily on what the mission and map framework is made for. An "interactible" object such as a button also has a 'script' (a definition of its behaviour) that says what happens with it under certain circumstances. In that sense, an NPC is just like a button. It all depends on what behaviour the mission sub/object is meant to portray.

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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.

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I like this idea, but instead of having the aliens appear after a timer, maybe have a visible skirmish between them and the local forces on the other side of the map. The local forces are a distraction that leave the UFO less well-guarded - whilst you go in and do your business. This wouldn't be a couple of farmers with shotguns but a serious force that could hold its own, fighting defensively from cover. If you can get out quickly you signal the locals to pull back - earning you a relation bonus. If you take too long, the aliens beat off the local force and come back to the ship, meaning you have to fight your way out.

This would involve specifying that the local forces fight very defensively and that the aliens continue engaging them. But as far as I'm aware, that isn't a million miles away from the current AI. Might be quite fun to watch the battle progress, especially if you can have a hand in equipping the locals with better weapons as the game progresses. 

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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.

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  • 11 months later...

Reviving this thread, terror from the deep had grueling 2 stage shipping routs and "alien activity detected" missions that were very similar to colony missions but still mixed it up a bit. Perhaps what is needed is a few more major events that only happen 3 or 4 times in a general play through like an air port, power plant, hospital, boat harbor or certain location mixed with a different mission objective for a big pinnacle event. TFTD was good in this way as general missions were underwater, but terror missions were on land and of course the former that was just explained which gave more variety. Other potential events could be shown between standard UFO missions in the early game to split things up like country's giving there input about their alien situation etc to tell more of a story rather then waiting for each consecutive UFO mission to appear. 

Seeing the bigger TFTD missions come up on the screen always gave me chills and seeing that art work and knowing whats to come.  I Haven't seen much of this artwork in my current play though of X1.

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Edited by roxxed
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The variety of missions is one thing, and the interest of a given mission another one, that depends as well on how the Alien AI can adapt its behaviour. Is it possible to switch between behaviours according to timers or conditions (the player overcame the entry guard and breached the UFO, the scheduled number of civilians were slain/abducted)?

As for sabotaging the UFO's engines or power sources (or anti-grav generator), this would cause Aliens to become hyper-aggressive.

Another possibility, even in case  all the crew is wiped out, is that any undamaged UFO could (or would have a chance of) take off per automated procedures and follows a programmed flight course up to orbital stations (although it would defend far less well against interceptors on its way back). This would add to the necessity to split the team, one sub-objective being to keep the UFO grounded.

Abandoning (or fulfilling) a mission when the UFO had crashed and wasn't captured would result in a bombing run by allied air forces for the same added benefits as if this had been decided first hand (instead of sending troops), but there would be a chance that the Alien anticipated this and ran far from the UFO (and through any surviving cordon of local forces). This would generate an instant (less than an hour delay) mission with a lander coming down to the same location to retrieve the Alien survivors. The condition for this would  be the presence of valuable troops (elites, leaders, wraiths?).

Another idea discussed here is civilian abduction. The mission could begin with some civilians already in the UFO's hold. Then, we need a mechanism so that civilians would move toward and inside the UFO instead of toward the Xenonauts, and this without any mind control help (only the threat of a plasma gun). Civilians could be changed into Captive civilians (the same way a Civilian is zombified?) who would have a coward alien AI (fleeing to the inside of the UFO), but only as long as they are under the threat of two or more armed Aliens (there would be guards in the hold). If the abductors are killed, the Captives return to normal Civilians in the other turn (being crouched for a full turn; the "capture" process could take a full turn as well).

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"The aliens have launched a ground mission nearby. We've identified where their gargantuan UFO is landed, and suspect that they've left a skeleton crew to garrison it. Get in, take pictures of anything that looks expensive, grab anything that isn't nailed down, smash anything that is, and get out before they get back."

"The aliens have launched a major siege of an allied military installation, and they've asked us to help evacuate. The alien forces are too numerous to hope to hold off for long, but if we can buy our allies enough time they can get their research and equipment out of their base and rig some surprises for the invaders."

Launch two missions at the same 'strategic' time, and have performance on the one determine how long the other has?

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