Scorched Earth / Alien Conquests

[PyRoT]

What if some scenarios are made so that they are really difficult and require you to retreat to your craft, abort and flatten the area to clear the dangerous amount of aliens?

Civilians would naturally die, the nation would naturally dislike you, but it would be an option. It would also risk the country disliking you from that point. Possibly not selling you some of their products and cutting funding.

The alternative would be to do nothing and allow the aliens to do their thing causing bigger problems down the track. Sure you would get funding and be able to uy their stuff for longer. But eventually, the country could be overrun anyway. The bad thing is that it would make it much more likely for nearby countries to have large alien incursions of their own, spreading the problems.

A mechanic to get the country back might be possible but would require a certain amount of highly difficult missions depending on the size of the country, to get things under control. Perhaps funding the country yourself would be required to get their own forces capable of fighting back.

Good idea?

[Gorlom]

I wonder if the game can support such consequntial actions (right now things spawn randomly all over based on a ticker system).

It sounds like an interesting mechanic. (although I think it's alreadyexplained that in the ingame world any misssion you don't accept are either handled by local ground forces or bombed by that country.) And I'd like to see it further explored.

[Gauddlike]

That doesn't sound much different from failing a terror mission or having to retreat from a ufo assault.

They will give you relation hits for failing, especially if civilians are killed.

When the nation reaches a low level of relation then they will stop funding you.

Chris has said they there are plans for missions to be available that will allow you to get back on good relations with a nation at this point, unlike the original game.

[thothkins]

to put on my devil's advocate beanie - love those little horns:-

If the Xenonauts get to retreat to their craft, take off and then deny the area to the aliens.

then the aliens in a landed craft should also have that option.

The mission for landed craft would be that you had X number of turns to seize the vessel or ot would close it's doors.

Then you have X number of rounds to get out of Dodge before it takes off and kicks your butt.

An ever crueller option is that it takes off and waits for your chinook, so you had better have brought an escort.

I've seen mention of a liberation scenario somewhere and other nations responses to nations with falling scores is touched on in the GeoPol mod thingy

[PyRoT]

That doesn't sound much different from failing a terror mission or having to retreat from a ufo assault.

They will give you relation hits for failing, especially if civilians are killed.

When the nation reaches a low level of relation then they will stop funding you.

Chris has said they there are plans for missions to be available that will allow you to get back on good relations with a nation at this point, unlike the original game.

I guess my idea involves having a mechanic where you always have the choice of flattening an area instead of fighting it. It wouldn't make sense to do it each time as it would piss off the country and lose your funding / benefits (not to mention loot). But there could be some missions where the number of aliens is just too difficult to defeat (for most). In these cases, failure or retreat would be worse than the cost of flatenning the area.

[Gauddlike]

If you don't engage a site the plan is to have it flattened by local forces.

That is to explain why they vanish I think.

I don't know if there is a funding hit on that for failing to engage at all though.

Sounds like your idea ties in with the way things are planned at the moment so probably best to keep it in mind until the current system is fully implemented and then see how you can expand on it.

[PyRoT]

Yeah, I guess you may be right. Still, I like the idea of having this choice / mechanic simply because it would be cool. Particularly if you were playing with some Iron Man mode where you couldn't reload. Then you would have the choice of going back with another team and trying to defeat the aliens again, letting it be if the alien force is small, or flatenning the area yourself.

Anyway I look forward to seeing the future.

[Gauddlike]

Normally the sites would disappear as soon as you left, otherwise the game would ideally need to track your progress on that particular mission.

If it didn't then you might find that the site you had managed to get down to its last couple of defenders was now back to full strength.

The specific map used would need to be saved, preferably including any damage you had done to the ufo (thinking salvage wise) and even to the surrounding buildings.

Allowing the player to trash the whole ufo to kill all but one enemy then leaving and sending team two in to capture an intact ufo by killing one enemy would be a bad idea.

There was a thread a while back about having the option of selecting a site and requesting a bombing run instead of intercepting it now I think about it, would be interesting to see what Chris said in reply to that one.

[ClaytonCross]

Interest idea, I would be cool to destroy the whole site or to attach a failed mission again.

(to be honest I looked st this post because I though some one was trying to tie the 1991 game "scorched earth" in to it (its the predecessor of worms so I just had to see where this was going. lol. But this is cool too)

[thothkins]

I was all for keeping the Quickbattle scenario launcher, for just this sort of thing. You only have to look at the tenuous balance a lot of players have current;y, to see the impact of putting your top squad in a very difficult defensive scenario.

Lots of fun for a one off, but a pain otherwise, unless you're rescuing an important politician or scientist that provides some sort of reward/ secondary objective in the main game.