Increase utility of base defenses

[Sathra]

Copying this over, since its one of those odd questions that don't get asked much.

As you progress through the game, you begin to consider just shooting down a few UFO's rather than go through the hassle of the battlescape phase. This then becomes a burden of send plane up, nuke UFO, land, etc. Perhaps consider adding a mechanism to shoot down UFO's with missle tech from bases? (especially given how little utility there was with most defense systems anyway - far better to leave a small squad there and earn some cash from the attack)

There is a concern that you may shoot down UFO's you may not wish to but you could manage this through clicking on the UFO and being able to set a flag (shoot down or not shoot down). Adds some interesting things to the tech as you can have a whole tree of missiles (strength and range) as upgrades that are meaningful.

Had a quick search and couldn't find this already mentiond but if it's a repeat please disregard. My biggest complaint with UFO was always that the end game had far too many frustrations due to constant hassles with UFO's.

If you shoot down a UFO and don't want to go recover it, you can right click (I believe) the crash site and a cruise missile gets sent over there to blow it up. No need to do ground missions if you don't want to!

cheers for the response. Yeh what I was getting at here was using the base to shoot the UFO down in the first place. During the end game, micro management no longer becomes a priority (in some instances) as you can trade game time for your own time

(ie. choose to play every mission to micro manage skill increases or just extend the game and do it for say supply missions only)

However, you may wish to shoot down other missions being conducted. Once you've got a few bases on the map, it would be nice to just automate the entire shoot down/intercept phase completely. Hyperwave decoder spots UFO, you select the 'hastalavista baby' button, and that UFO is targeted by any base in range until it's dead. Here investing in longer term/higher power missile defenses allows you to improve the performance of bases.

(this needs to be tuned with a UFO attacking an X-COM base but that would be doable by increasing the armor of battleships perhaps?)

Just a hair brained idea but I always found x-com was so much more fun in the early to mid game, and succumbed to the 'civilisation' micro-management downfall in the end-game. At least in civ you can choose to automate a lot of things if you're happy to sacrifice some efficiency - something similar would may work well nice in xeno for a minimal dev cost.

There is also auto-resolve for air combat if you easily outclass the opposition craft, if that helps appease you?

I'm sure it was brought up at least twice. Hmm.

Ah! Found it. Chris said no.

Chris wrote:

Bases will have missile defence modules as in the original X-com, but they won't be represented on the Geoscape. They'll only be involved in repelling base attacks. I can see what you're suggesting, but we've already got interceptors in the game to shoot down the UFOs so I don't see a need to make it more complex.

I'm guessing its because basically cause it either detracts from making best use of your interceptors (since the alien ships come in waves, making best use of the craft you have is important), or it doesn't add enough to be worthwhile (if the range is pretty short, it'll be such a minor thing that you might as well not have it).

As for the defences themselves, each one is actually a 'defense module' that you can upgrade as your tech increases. So you don't have to dismantle and rebuild to get the best effectiveness. They can also reduce the numbers of actual aliens that invade your base if they fail to destroy the UFO.

As a result, its kind of worthwhile to build even basic missile defences, since they can still have an effect, and you can upgrade them when you can plasma cannon batteries without having to build a completely new building. It'll still take some time and cash to upgrade them though.

[Sathra]

Part 2:

Yeah, we'll have to get the air combat auto-resolve in the game to reduce the micromanagement, but I don't think that having bases shoot down UFOs is a good idea (for the reasons Sathra has quoted).

There could be a middle ground, though.

Cool Cannons for base defense have the best "DPS" but are very short ranged.

Only an UFO directly attacking the base will be hit by those.

Cool Missiles have a range of somewhere 2/3 of the short range RADAR.

They don't fire often so they have worse DPS when an UFO actually attacks the base.

However, they will factor into any air combat that is taking place somewhat close to the base.

These long range attacks only work if you have aircraft present for the terminal guidance. (aka in air combat)

That way they cannot pound UFOs to scrap that just pass the base.

They are what you want if you're concentrating on active (aircraft) defenses instead of passive (cannon) ones.

However, if your aircraft just happen to be down for refueling... what a pity. Shoulda built the more reliable cannons...

The... involvement... in air combat could be something like one missile (with very bad turning!) entering the combat arena every 20-30 sec.

It would enter from the sidelines, already pointed at it's target.

Ammunition might have to be limited or you could kite a capital UFO, only having one interceptor fly a big circle while the automatic missiles pound it into scrap.

It should help, not win the air combat all by itself.

That way the player can run two completely different base defense strategies but cannot have one building which gives him the best bonus in both cases.

Chris has also said that at some point in the game you may be able to remove the smaller UFO's from the map.

I think he used the example of sharing information to allow the other human air forces to take out the smaller enemies once they are no longer worth your time to destroy yourself.

Either by specific research or as the invasion reaches a certain point.

Hopefully that would prevent your crack squadron having to chase down every single small scout in each wave.

[Alyric]

I'm not sure how old this discussion is, but the idea is interesting and I'd like to add my two cents.

I'd agree that allowing base defenses to shoot down enemy ships would be too much of a game-changing ability (and it sounds like that idea was shot down, so to speak, so it's a moot point).

However, someone suggested an ability to use base defenses to target and destroy craft which have already been grounded (provided they're in range, I assume). This idea is appealing to me for the simple reason that, as pointed out earlier, the end game of X-Com gets to be very tedious at times. Typically I'll be shooting down a UFO every few minutes - if not more - which then necessitates a trip to the crash site for a ground combat.

Bombing the crash site isn't the only way around that tedium, obviously, and I admit I haven't been able to read all of the information about the game. Perhaps this has already been addressed in the form of an autoresolve for ground combat, or some other method - in which case, feel free to disregard! But anything you can put in the game to help alleviate the constant micromanagement of ground combat (which is fun, but rapidly gets tiring when you'd rather be researching) would be helpful.

[Sathra]

Its planned to just be able to right-click a crash-site and it'll disappear. Don't get any points from it, but you don't lose any either.

Its not the base defenses themselves, its more the various allied nations bombing the bejeezus out of the site with cruise missiles or something.

[Jean-Luc]

I really can't think of any other base defense utility that doesn't involve its representation on the geoscape.

I do, however, have an idea for a simple implementation that is pretty much automated. Just like the radar, the anti-air battery would have a range circle. If your interceptors engage any UFOs within this circle, the battery fires a single salvo which is assumed to occur just before your fighters reach the bogeys. This is instantly auto-calculated with a 0 - 100% chance of each UFO in the group suffering structural damage, critical damage or being destroyed (only escorts would be destroyable while the "capital ships" could only be damaged).

It's simple, automated and requires no player input beyond attempting to engage within the battery's range.

One thing I like about Alien Invasion is how base defenses and interceptors can work in tandem.

[tonberrytoby]

I really can't think of any other base defense utility that doesn't involve its representation on the geoscape.

I do, however, have an idea for a simple implementation that is pretty much automated. Just like the radar, the anti-air battery would have a range circle. If your interceptors engage any UFOs within this circle, the battery fires a single salvo which is assumed to occur just before your fighters reach the bogeys. This is instantly auto-calculated with a 0 - 100% chance of each UFO in the group suffering structural damage, critical damage or being destroyed (only escorts would be destroyable while the "capital ships" could only be damaged).

It's simple, automated and requires no player input beyond attempting to engage within the battery's range.

One thing I like about Alien Invasion is how base defenses and interceptors can work in tandem.

Unless we give up on the idea of trying to hide the base from the aliens, this is a bad idea. This might have already happened, I wasn't paying too much attention to the discussions.

What I would want, is a sort of barricade room ( or even fixed defenses like in Apoc ). This one would give you a good place to set up your anti base attack defense on the battle-scape.

[Sathra]

Fixed defenses won't be in. It was brought up a few times, and it would kind of make it too easy. You can do something similar with troops in cover.

I did bring up a barricade room before, would be good to see. Also curious as to what base defense actually looks like. Are there going to be things like sandbags, blast shields, etc around the place for corridor fighting?

Will there be corridors? Or is it going to be more a bunch of interconnected rooms and semi-urban combat?