Random thought about the importance of the main squad (storywise)

[DaceKonn]

While reading a little of the posts on the forum and also some guides around the web as I'm playing X1 I realized one thing. You play a global organization, military global organization and like X-Com (fireaxis series) you save the world with 1 squad basically.

I know in X1 you can make more squads but it's considered "suboptimal" but in realistic setting this shouldn't be suboptimal at all, this should be the core strategy to have global reach. So there is this one part that the game tries to be realistic in a way and the other part that it enforces and encourages the unrealistic "one team to save them all" approach. Especially that this team was a rookie (private) team. I know that starting soldiers are higher than privates but that's not the point.

The game sells the notion that I command an military organization tasked to save the globe = whole globe - from aliens. The strategy part wants to make a lot of bases with strike teams in each one of them. And then you find out it's not really what the game meant with the global thing

Ok. I'm starting to ranting so fast forward to my idea:

Stop telling people that you are commanding a regular team. Make it loud and clear that this is a team made from the best operatives available.

Problem? Ugh the military ranks. The "private" screams with "a regular guy" thing. Maybe substitute them with something fictional that would be characteristic for the xenonauts? Make an entry level guy already (storywise) an exceptional operative that could be even in high military rank but in the eyes of xenonauts he is an Initiate or something.

This also means - no secondary strike teams. Or maybe an expensive option to make more.

Instead - recon teams - or scout teams, or regular teams or something. Soldiers you hire but not manage, they can have their military ranks. They can be spread around the world in air bases etc.

This Recon Teams serve a purpose - because I remember that the goal in X2 was to limit how many missions one can take and limit how many crashsites one can visit - make recon teams go first. Take the closest airbse and order a recon team to scout ahead. They might find out that the crashsite had zero survivors - so no need to call in the main team.

They might find little resistance and have % of success to be able to handle it - like auto-resolving air combat. So you setup recon teams around the globe and send them around to investigate. You could also make "unknown" events and let recon team to reveal what is it. When things go ugly you send the A-list, The Team, the guys you level up, equip and who are ready to deal with the hardest cases.

This would make Players feel like they command something and at the same time it would serve a kind of explanation why it has to be this one specific team that has to fly on the other side of the globe to check yet another crashsite - it's because you have send a recon team and what you had is "you lost signal from the recon team that reached the site..."

This of course means that the recon teams would be relatively cheap.

Motivation of this idea:

Take Stargate - they send SG-1 on missions, but in many episodes there is a hint that there are much more teams that operate, we just don't see the boring stuff, we see the A-list guys doing important things. We occasionally see how other teams need support, get lost, get killed, or where they lend a hand to the a-list team. This makes the whole idea of SGC an actual military organization not only a SG-1 team alone.

A game that serves similar "trick" is Titanfall - it's an FPS game where you are an exceptional soldier on the battlefield - a pilot of a mech. And matches are 5 vs 5. So... exceptional not really... especially in the setting about war. So what kind of a war that would be if the battles are resolved with 5 soldiers? So in Titanfall there are AI grunts walking around in bigger numbers (like 5 in a team) and they actually fight each other, they try to shoot the player character with poor results. You can even see a scripted event where for example two grunts are grappling on the ground and you might kill one in order to save the other. They are easy target and - they spawn constantly. This makes you feel like in actually combat and you feel exceptional because you have this frame of reference.

This would be the reason for Reacon Teams - to serve as a frame of reference, they wouldn't require management, equipping them etc. but at the same time gives you a reason why you have one strike team that has to fly around the globe. Yes, they would die a lot, but that's their purpose. Those are the grunts. Reacon teams could also serve more purposes like secure some strategic places so that a mission could be unlocked - for example having to take out outposts before you launch a strike on the alien base. The more outposts are secured the less bonus the alien defense force will have.

Also if people wouldn't like the idea of actually making and sending the teams - make them automatic - just a  kind of animation on geoscape or text here and there. After shooting down an UFO show a small dropship land nearby and show a text: "A reacon team has secured the crashsite, no survivors found" or "A reacon team near XYZ gone missing..." which gives you a feeling that this huge organization actually has soldiers not only 8 badasses that have to save the world.

[Conductiv]

This game is a turn based tactical with the goal to dominate the AI. as your troops complete missions, they become better allowing the player to have a feeling of attachment to them. however, if the game is challenging enough, you will often see players use the same dudes over and over...and then you get the "A-team saves the world" problem.

realistically this is solved by the fact that soldiers do not become significantly better past a few deployments, and the same dudes cannot be everywhere at once. now in the game where missions are fed to player in a piece by piece fashion, you would need some sort of incentive for the player to mix up his team...it seems chris will be implementing a stress system that would prevent the player from constantly fielding the same squad.

ideally you would want about 20-30 dudes to rotate around, this number is small enough to become invested in them and big enough that they would not simply considered 1 team with backup meat. however, the larger to rotation, the more impact this has on the actual length of the game, as it does take X missions to "level" a squad, meaning 3 teams will need 3*X missions just to "level" for endgame content. in effect a rotation system can also bloat your game to an extend it is no longer fun to play.

personally I dislike adding fodder teams like the proposed recon squads, as it takes away from the main game ( turn based tactical) and just staples another minigame on top. it doesn't actually solve the A team saves the world problem, nor does it actually change the feel of commanding a large military organisation. (as in the players hands they will have no more value then a set of fighter jets)   

[Komandos]

The problem is that while one (single) player's battle group flies around the globe for several days to eliminate 10 "crash sites", the alien battle groups sit motionless all these days and do nothing.

If the "UFO crash site" gets the opportunity to cause damage to the region (at the crash site) every hour (every half hour), then the player will think:

What is more profitable?

1. Use one battle group that (on average) gets to the crash site in 10 hours (for example), but the region takes 1000 damage.

2. Use five battle groups that (on average) will reach the crash site in 2 hours (for example), and the region will take (in 2 hours) 200 damage.

Total:

"UFO crash site" every hour (every minute) should cause damage (damage) to the region in which it is located.

There is also a "UFO landing site": every minute it must inflict damage (damage) to the region in which it is located.

[Alienkiller]

You have the Choise to send your Soldiers to the Crash-Site or let the Staate / Country do it and get therefore Cash, Credits, Money.

We all don´t know what the Devs have Refited / Reworked or Upgraded in the Stress-System, so we will see. The Devs already said, that UFO-Crashsites wanna be much lesser for your Troops (because of much higher Sitiations like light / heavy Terror-Missions, Base Attack- / Defense-Missions and Missions we don´t know yet). Short said: You have to use your Soldiers wisely. Not every Crashsite-Mission make sense about the new Enemys and more Secrets which get in the Game. 

For the Crashsite-UFOs are more enough Ideas to handle them. Atm. the Game is in the World-Map, Bases, Missions and so on not finished and we will get many tested Features in one or other Form back (Outposts, friendly Military-Bases or whatever) and the friendly Armys have to do that Side-Jobs for you and f. e. secure the Crash-Side and transport the UFO to an Xenonauts-Outpost, where it can be divided in its fragmentes again.

Edited December 20, 2021 by Alienkiller