Ground Transports

[Intel Guardian]

Hey guys, decided to sign up to the forums after playing Xenonauts for around 5 years. I was wondering if there are or were any plans for ground vehicles in the game as opposed to dropships and helicopters for transporting troops. They could carry more troops, have much more firepower than dropship-carried vehicles and not able to be intercepted by alien fighters at the cost of being significantly slower and not being able to access difficult terrain. Sorry if this has been suggested before. Thanks!

[Chris]

5 hours ago, Intel Guardian said:

Hey guys, decided to sign up to the forums after playing Xenonauts for around 5 years. I was wondering if there are or were any plans for ground vehicles in the game as opposed to dropships and helicopters for transporting troops. They could carry more troops, have much more firepower than dropship-carried vehicles and not able to be intercepted by alien fighters at the cost of being significantly slower and not being able to access difficult terrain. Sorry if this has been suggested before. Thanks!

Welcome to the forums. I hadn't actually considered the idea of ground-based dropships in Xenonauts, but I'm not sure they'd be a great fit for the game. I seem to recall X-Com Apocalypse had them, right? They seem like quite a cool addition in a smaller-scale city-level game like that was, but we'd have to do a lot of work with the pathfinding for a ground vehicle on the dropship that we don't have to worry about when we use planes (i.e. not being able to cross seas, marking specific areas of the Geoscape as being difficult terrain) and I don't really feel like they'd add much to the gameplay experience.

Plus designing and modelling a new transport vehicle and getting it set up in every type of combat terrain etc is quite a bit of work I'd rather avoid if possible 

[Bobit]

@Chris

In popular mods for UFO defense there are 4 ways dropships are unique

1) Dropships have different ranges, speed, and terrain they can travel on. This means that some nearby missions you will have 12 soldiers in an APC, and in some rapid response missions 2 in a car.

2) It adds some geoscape strategy deciding which dropships you should research/manufacture and where.

3) In underwater missions you must wear a dive suit, in covert missions you cannot wear heavy armor, etc. This requires a lot of content, but it's fun.

4) Just like Apoc the 40k mod has dropships which also function as interceptors, and interceptors which also function as HWPs (I think). This is even more awkward, but pretty cool.

But yeah you're probably right that it's not worth making the art for. Which is making me pretty worried. I don't care for art at all, I hope it doesn't result in less vanilla or modded content.

[Intel Guardian]

11 hours ago, Chris said:

Welcome to the forums. I hadn't actually considered the idea of ground-based dropships in Xenonauts, but I'm not sure they'd be a great fit for the game. I seem to recall X-Com Apocalypse had them, right? They seem like quite a cool addition in a smaller-scale city-level game like that was, but we'd have to do a lot of work with the pathfinding for a ground vehicle on the dropship that we don't have to worry about when we use planes (i.e. not being able to cross seas, marking specific areas of the Geoscape as being difficult terrain) and I don't really feel like they'd add much to the gameplay experience.

Plus designing and modelling a new transport vehicle and getting it set up in every type of combat terrain etc is quite a bit of work I'd rather avoid if possible 

Ah, fair enough. Cheers for the answer!