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Government Contract Missions/ Optional Objectives


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Goldhawk,

I was curious about what you thought about world governments (beyond providing funding) directly providing contract missions for the Xenonauts to potentially execute.  Or they may come in the form of optional objectives within the standard missions.  For example, supporting or relieving local forces, capturing aliens alive for their own research purposes, turning over captured alien bases entirely to the host government, after you already captured one for your purposes, for a pricey commission.  I know the Geoscape effort to help develop a more lively  narrative is a highly desirable goal within the community, and I think this may add to the tactical side of the game as well.

I ask because I am one of those £500 Kickstarter backers, and I was really intrigued about being apart of the game.  You mentioned the option of "Geoscape Situations" which included missing personnel, and that lead me to believe you may be interested in more diverse missions.  If such options are possible, I would much more prefer to be represented a member of the local forces (US Army) that make contact with the Xenonauts during a mission; i.e. my unit is combat ineffective before the onset of a terror mission, but if one of the Xenonauts is able to link up with me on the map then I can provide off-map artillery fire support for the remainder of that mission.  support like, Immediate Suppression and/or Immediate Smoke fire missions that can be called at the beginning of each turn.

Just curious about what you think?

 

P.S. Scott Manley (from Youtube) I believe got many of us into the first Xenonauts, and I think it would be awesome if you included him in some of the artwork for the research/tech tree.

LOVE THE GAME!

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Given that there is a drive to embed this game in the crossfire of the cold war, I think it would be highly appropriate to have the US, USSR and maybe a non-aligned representative (e.g. Sweden, a Pan-African Union) approach the Xenonauts with contracts or the like. And not just those Council Missions from XCOM either, there was no real choice in them because your actions didn't relate to supporting different factions. Having the global regions actually relate to one another would be cool. 

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One of the badly executed things about XCOM:EU and Xenonauts 1 is that both games would sometimes feel ...dead.
Anything that ever happened in the games was always because of the player actions, only the player would take down UFOs, only the player would defend human cities, only the player would research and develop Alien tech, it felt like babysitting the entire world.
The Civilians and Local Forces in Xenonauts 1 helped ground missions feel a bit more alive, but the ended up being repetitive nonetheless.

Giving a more important role to Governments and how they can benefit/harm the Xenonauts within the Geoscape and (optional) Missions could really improve the experience.
Secondary objectives or Mission Attributes are a great idea too, games like Into the Breach prove this by how an otherwise simple "just kill the enemy" mission can become quite intense by adding random airstrikes each turn, giving you two ancient tanks to help you out but that must also survive the mission, requesting the destruction of a dam to weaken the enemy or making you protect a moving train for 4 turns.... 4 unexpectedly tense turns.

With ItB as a solid example, Xenonauts 2 could do something similar like your suggestion of "Support military personnel" or "Cover retreating soldiers for 'X' turns" (Could be mixed in with civilians or even a VIP too) on a Terror Mission (or it's own unique mission type).. "Reach this military database and protect the specialist we sent and the terminal for 5 turns", etc ... it rewards the player for doing more than just kill everything, makes missions more interesting by providing variety and prevents the player from just destroying everything in sight. (The latter is the reason why Civilians/Local Forces were added in Xenonauts 1... Secondary Objectives would not only do the same, but they would do it way better)
Your idea of providing artillery is also good. I personally suggest it could be more or less like this: Having a random chance for support from local armed forces on a Terror Site or guaranteed on a pre-designed mission type, letting the player to mark a 20x20 area to be bombarded by a artillery/air forces each two turns, it can be balanced out by making the airstrike/artillery hit at the beginning/ending of your next turn (giving non-suppressed Aliens more than enough time to change positions) and being inaccurate (the 20x20 zone is marked but only a random 5x5 area within the designated zone will be hit). 
There could also be objectives or conditions with negative consequences, such as having the player clear the mission within 10 turns or less, otherwise Alien reinforcements will be teleported/deployed into a Base Assault... Or random alien bombarding will happen forcing the player to keep moving on Terror Missions, etc.

Plus, most of these ideas are relatively inexpensive or simple to execute, such as player/Alien airstrikes (just add some UFO/jet shadow moving, sound effects and a explosion on the top-most tiles), Alien Reinforcements could just have a teleportation effect... even Government Contracts don't necessarily need to be a unique mission type (Capturing Aliens could be done on any kind of mission, as long as the requested Alien type is present).

Edited by Kyo21943
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Airstrikes and artillery have been rebuked because they are OP. Kinda like the building that launches acid in Into the Breach. Obviously you really want them because they would solve the toughest aspects of a mission - but that is precisely why they'd make the game worse. Although if those airstrikes were limited to a narrow subset of missions, e.g. when they take place in a military base, then it wouldn't ruin all of ground combat.

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Hi Colin - thanks for backing, we can talk about what you want to do with your appearance in the game in more detail over email when the Kickstarter closes so I'll just talk about the generalities of government involvement in this post.

The key issue for me is whether you can provide a sufficiently worthwhile reward for assisting a government without making it so essential it becomes a grind (e.g. it would be too much to have to grind relations in a region before you could build a base there). Some examples could be slotted into the current strategy design without too much trouble, for example governments giving you optional and randomised "quests" that you can fulfill for a monetary reward - e.g. capture a specific live alien and turn it over (as you suggested), or just giving them specific technology that you've researched, etc.

Making things more complex than "do a task and we'll give you some money" is more difficult, because at that point you'd probably want to see the effects of your actions on the Geoscape and have the strength of the government in the local region mean something to the strategic situation. That's beyond the scope of the game, I think, at least for now. We played with a few ideas for that stuff but it ended up overcomplicating the mechanics too much.

On the tactical level things like airstrikes and artillery don't really fit within the intended squad-based-tactics game, but having them limited to a specific map does mitigate that issue a bit. I worry that having a few "pre-set" events during missions like encountering the local forces with artillery support would get old quite fast - but then money also works as a reward for certain tactical missions, so we could potentially have missions where you assist the local government with an issue to earn some extra money. So yeah, I guess government contracts are possible but I wouldn't expect them to affect the strategic situation beyond giving you a bit of extra cash to play with.

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On 7/9/2018 at 10:29 PM, Ninothree said:

Airstrikes and artillery have been rebuked because they are OP. Kinda like the building that launches acid in Into the Breach. Obviously you really want them because they would solve the toughest aspects of a mission - but that is precisely why they'd make the game worse. Although if those airstrikes were limited to a narrow subset of missions, e.g. when they take place in a military base, then it wouldn't ruin all of ground combat.

On X1 maps, I always found it kind of silly when your soldiers are taking cover behind a scenery tank but the tank isn't doing anything. With the removal of player vehicles in X2, I think it'd be great to have static local forces vehicles on maps. 

wzmtety.jpg

Having the ability to move would be overpowered of course, but it would feel like you're actually cooperating with local ground forces if you could mark targets with a flare and have it lay down some fat explosions within its line of sight. A moment of joy and a small section of the map where you can feel safe during a terror mission, before venturing off and clearing the rest of the map. And if your opponent is something invincible but dumb like an Andron, you could weave it into the strategy to lure them there. Meanwhile smarter aliens know that it's a bad idea to go near the explosive-spewing treaded saucer, or will flank it and fire some plasma at its soft rear and side armour. 

Edited by ScottyWired
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