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How much do people like the idea of item "components" (for construction)?


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I think @Sheepy said it best here, the random drops should be only for creating attachments to your weapons, armor upgrades, specialized weapons but nothing more than that. Most baseline weapons should only be crafted with Alenium and Alien Alloys. That will make a game session more varied and replayable as the drops are entirely random. Some more active examples:

- Combat stimulants: give a soldier back 50% of his/her APs back for a 20% loss in health. Can only be crafted with Sebilian Serums.

- Mind Jogger: a taser-like weapon that can cure mind control, single use only. Can only be made with a Neural Mapper.

- Escape grenade: can be used with only a tiny amount of APs, let a soldier teleport to a random point on the map to escape danger. Can only be crafted with Intact Wraith Glands.

- Heat bayonet: an attachment for your gun, a handy melee weapon when an enemy surprise you from a corner and you don’t have enough APs to switch to a shotgun. Can only be crafted with a Vibro Heater.

- Air stabilizer: an upgrade to your Jetpack armor, allow your soldiers to shoot while hovering. Can only be crafted with Quantum Gyroscope.

- Chameleon field: an upgrade to your armor, make you invisible for a single turn in a battle (I.e. cannot be shoot at by aliens in overwatch). Can only be crafted using Nanothread and a Ceasan Psychic Enhancer.

This combined with regional/factional missions (to do favors for certain countries), could create a choice for the player to support certain regions based on the drops they give you as a reward and the exclusive weapons that needs those drops to be made.

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Would these be something like "special powers" that can't be got any other way? If so I think that would work very well. I like the idea of the mind-jogger. I remember that in Rebelstar on the ZX Spectrum (showing my age again here) if you took a coffee card to a machine and got a cup of coffee and used it it acted like a combat stimulant! In fact I can see good tactical uses for all those things you have mentioned. You've thought that through very well. I find jetpacks rather useless since you can't fire whilst hovering, so the Air Stabilizer is also a good idea. 

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I like the heat bayonet and air stabilizer mentioned by Xeroxth. Those sound fun

I am a bit skeptical about how components and crafting will affect the core game loop. As long as it doesn't add a lot of grind i'm cool with it

And if some random drops can add some new toys to the tactical battles, that's even better

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This is actually possible (well, it isn't YET, but it almost is) in the current setup. At the moment, version 12 has a v1 and v2 of every weapon family, armour families have a v1 and v2 and also have attachable modules. The v2 weapon families just have a damage boost at the moment, but.... the version 2 upgrade could be more than that and dependent on components. The armour modules,, any version upgrades for those armour modules and any version upgrades for the armour families, could, again, be dependant on components. That then always leave a basic set for anyone to have. 

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Thanks for the comments folks. I think various users have raised valid points about the potential complexity the extra items will add to the game, as if taken too far it gets overwhelming and starts to feel like bloat (although different players obviously have different thresholds for this sort of thing). However, if carefully curated then additional content is going to make the game more exciting for everyone.

Honestly, most of this stuff is just going to come down to playtesting - what looks great on paper may well fall down because, using the example provided by Ninothree, it might prove really tedious to have a couple of limited quantity rare weapons you have to switch around before every mission for some reason. Or it might not be any more difficult than situations in X1 when you didn't have enough Laser Rifles to go around. We'll only know by testing.

Armour Undersuits:
One idea that occurred to me that might help the situation is to add an additional class of armour - the undersuit / vest. This would work the same as it does in XCOM, where you have an additional "undersuit" armour slot which can contain a variety of different items that provide various defensive bonuses but do not change the art of the soldier (it'd just be another drop-down under the soldier armour dropdown).

This would be cool because it allows us to add a few interesting ideas without messing about with the existing armour progression. For example:

  • Nanothread Vest (+10 Armour) - 2 Alloys
  • Medvest (+10HP per turn regeneration, automatically seals bleeding wounds) - requires 4 Sebillian Serum / 4 Sebillian corpses
  • Nullvest (+50 psionic defence) - requires 4 Psi-Implants / Psyon corpses
  • Chitin Vest  (+25 Armour) - 4 Reaper Chitin / Reaper corpses
  • etc

None of those ideas are particularly original, but you get the point. Corpses suddenly have a bit more value than just being items to be sold, and after each mission you can craft a couple of additional items (if you want). I guess at that point it's not adding any extra workload to the player, just giving them more items to play with.

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Actually, I feel like it's probably sensible to take a step back and think about what we really want to achieve with this system. There's a few key points:

  • The tech tree should contain more items but without extending the overall length of the game.
  • The player should ideally not have enough resources to immediately mass produce enough of a specific item to outfit their entire squad with it as soon as they research it, so there's interesting decisions about which soldiers get the new equipment and an immediate reward after each mission where you can usually build a few more new items.
  • Specific resource needs should ideally encourage players to sometimes fight missions that wouldn't otherwise make sense for that stage in the game - e.g. "I need 6 Sebillian corpses to upgrade my Medical Room, guess I'm going to have to shoot down that little Scout and murderise some low-tier Sebillians!"
  • Engineers should have enough to do to keep them busy throughout the game.
  • Extracting maximum value from crash sites would ideally require lots of storage space and engineering time.

A lot of the problem in X1 was that the progression was really simple - you researched Laser Weapons, immediately built 8 laser weapons and gave them to your squad, then researched Wolf Armour and built 8 Wolf Armour for your squad, etc. Missions were generally just about unlocking the next tier of technology, so once you'd captured one Corvette UFO capturing a second didn't seem a particularly interesting idea. The players that grinded crash sites usually did so because they'd built too many interceptors, so they would run loads of missions just to stop themselves going into negative funds - which is literally the most boring mission "reward" possible.

When viewed in this context, perhaps adding lots of intermediate construction items is unnecessary complexity. I suspect trying to make use of items that already exist and are currently just sold for cash might be a better option.

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5 hours ago, Chris said:

The players that grinded crash sites usually did so because they'd built too many interceptors, so they would run loads of missions just to stop themselves going into negative funds - which is literally the most boring mission "reward" possible.

I might be one of those players. My objective is to shoot down every UFO I can with auto air combat. I remember needing a lot. Being able to bomb crash sites really helped and was nice and quick.

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I just think the gaining of special items that can't be got at by any other means is a nice idea (see Xeroxth's post at the top of the page). If you want them you have to go the extra mile for them and perhaps do missions that you don't really want to do because they are tougher. It's a risk/reward thing. Perhaps they could be in a store room in a UFO or an alien base so that if you do have to retreat then at least you do so by gaining something positive out of the mission that you wouldn't get out of a less dangerous one.

With regard to 'for construction', well that's a nice idea too - but it's less clear-cut than the above.

Edited by ooey
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I think @Chris ‘s idea of an under-suit could be easily implemented but can be much more improved if some of the rare components can only be from specific methods but always not 100% full proof. Like he said, using alien corpses to turn into resources could be a pretty good way of simplifying the system. But I think you could make it more in-depth by giving special conditions for those corpses to gain the resources you need. For instance:

- A Sebilian mook’s corpse only have a 10% chance of dropping a Sebilian Serum but the higher the rank, the higher this chance will get (an officer, veteran will have a drop chance of 40-50%)

- A captured Sebilian will have double the drop rate of a Sebilian killed in battle 

- Higher ranking aliens also have a chance to drop rarer stuff like cybernetic implants

This should also come with a holding facility/chop shop where Xenonauts get to decide the fate of the captured aliens. You could interrogate them for a long period with the rewards of special missions: attack their earth-based cloning facilities, kill their supply convoys, VIP protection... where rare resources can be gained without vivisection. Or you could chop them up to harvest their organs in only a day or two.

On 6/16/2020 at 3:53 AM, ooey said:

If you want them you have to go the extra mile for them and perhaps do missions that you don't really want to do because they are tougher. It's a risk/reward thing.

There should be special regional/factional missions to go with this. One of the factions can give you a mission to sabotage the other faction with the rewards being high-stats soldiers with special traits, unique faction weapon/attachment blueprints, research personnel, and even rare resources. Doing these missions will not only improve relations with the faction it will also sour the other faction respectively.

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Nothing with %. Had this in UFO ET Gold Version and there you get nothing. Every Game which tried such things with that Special Thing or that got 0% of it in every game.

You get in the Mission Complete Screen lit it is now or we let it out.

The other Theme with internal Suit-Modernisations is very good. So the Level 1 Armors (Suits etc.) can give a litte protection or whatever you give the Soldier, if he / she can´t use the Cevlar- etc. Upgrades. There I say 1.000.000.000 % YES. That´s an announced Feature from Founding an have to get in. About damm Time to bring it in.

Edited by Alienkiller
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7 hours ago, Alienkiller said:

Nothing with %. Had this in UFO ET Gold Version and there you get nothing. Every Game which tried such things with that Special Thing or that got 0% of it in every game.

Are you sure that wasn't just a programming error? Sure sounds like one! There was a bug where even if you started at superhuman level it actually started you at basic cadet level or something.

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Yep I´m sure. Played many Games (UFO ET Gold for example) and Mods / Refits of Games which intodruced that. And there such Special things never come up about such a Limitation. And I know many People which are saying the same.

If you were lucky (you got 1!!!! of these these Items) in x-thousend Runs from new Beginning. So when we get in such Special things and there is one in an UFO, Mission or so, than you will find it and it will be shown in the Mission Complete screen. The other Option is: Never get in such Specials.

The %-Limitation for Specials never work in the Future and never worked in the past.

Edited by Alienkiller
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18 hours ago, Xeroxth said:

I think @Chris ‘s idea of an under-suit could be easily implemented but can be much more improved if some of the rare components can only be from specific methods but always not 100% full proof. Like he said, using alien corpses to turn into resources could be a pretty good way of simplifying the system. But I think you could make it more in-depth by giving special conditions for those corpses to gain the resources you need. For instance:

- A Sebilian mook’s corpse only have a 10% chance of dropping a Sebilian Serum but the higher the rank, the higher this chance will get (an officer, veteran will have a drop chance of 40-50%)

- A captured Sebilian will have double the drop rate of a Sebilian killed in battle 

- Higher ranking aliens also have a chance to drop rarer stuff like cybernetic implants

Yeah, I broadly agree - although capturing a Sebillian alive so you can extract all its blood more efficiently is a bit dark :P

That said there's only so many items that can be created. Adding a whole new screen where you can manage what happens to each alien individually and chop them up into different parts is a nice idea but I think is turning a relatively simple system into something much more complex, and really I'm not sure there's going to be THAT many different types of armour that the game can support. To be honest, it's probably already going to be a struggle to think up a useful item that can be extracted from every type of dead alien!

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I like the Idea to use Alien Bodies in alive / death Form. That’s what make XCOM 1 & 2 so cool. In XCOM 1 for your Soldiers / Fighters to give them better Stats or Armors etc. and in XCOM 2 the Black Market for the Same Improve from Time to Time.

In Phoenix Point the Dead Aliens (later you should catch some of them alive too) give free integrated Weapons / Armor and / or Weak Points & similar Things.

Why not integrate in X2 in a similar System. In the Maingame it could be an easy System and in an DLC it will be improved.

 

Edited by Alienkiller
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46 minutes ago, Chris said:

capturing a Sebillian alive so you can extract all its blood more efficiently is a bit dark

I mean it’s pretty nothing compared to the things the two sides did during the Cold War. Even less when it’s a war for human independence. If you want to make an omelette you have to break a few eggs ;).

I think there should be only at most 3 components for each species of aliens (2 or three more for ships and drones). That should be pretty manageable and open to expansion from the inevitable X-Division mod sequel :rolleyes:. I myself thought out a few that could fit.

>Ceasan: Psychic Enhancer, Neural Mapper(very rare on mook but have a 30% drop chance for officers and pilots), Nanothread

>Scout Floater: Cyber Eye (2 is needed to make a night vision visor, 1 for Enhanced Scope), Nanothread

>Sebilian: Sebilian Serum, Metallic Ossifier (an implant that surrounds their bones with alien alloys, can be used to directly enhance your troops to explosive/fire damage)

>Andron: Vibro Heater, Plasma Core (very useful, can be used for making Gun Overcharger, Exo Skin, Homing Grenade,...)

>Wraith: Intact Wraith Glans (the alien is pretty bad to get resources from).

>Harridan: Quantum Gyroscope, Neural Mapper, Parasitic Spine (the reason why removing the Harridan’s armor will kill it, used to make under armor that give huge AP bonus, with the cost of heavy bleeding if the torso armor is broken).

>Reaper: Cocoon Fluid (same stuff that protect the developing Reaper inside the zombie, to make an under armor that can cocoon up for one turn/battle to protect from dumb deaths like a plasma canon shot out of nowhere), Nanothread, Reaper Venom (for more drugs, yay!).

>Drones: Plasma Core and Quantum Gyroscope (extremely low drop rate of 5% as they usually explode upon death can only be harvested when taken down by emp/stun weapons)

>Praetor: Nothing! Yes, because they hate genetic/mechanical implants and their psychic brains disintegrate upon death.

All under armor needs an extra component and nanothread to make. Later Nanothread can be made straight from alien corpses with a research.

Ships especially transport ships and well supplied bases can have all of these components in stores. So interrogating living aliens to find these is also rewarding if you find organ harvesting too evil. I actually worked out more components for the other aliens I posted on the new aliens thread but these can be the start.

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Talking about things being a bit 'dark', what about a stage where any captured aliens that aren't useful for study being used instead for target practice for your squaddies?! You release them into the environment without any weapons and your squaddies get to hunt them down :). It might be a fun thing to do if things are going south in the main game!

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You mean in the Training Center? Would be funny but dangerous at the same time.. But The Idea with more Investigation/ Research-Bonuses from Aliens / UFO’s etc. upgrade the Game to XCOM / XCOM2 / Phoenix Point Level and That is a Must have.

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Yes. Maybe a captured alien gets loose in your base and you have to hunt it down - something like that. It would certainly mean that base maps will be seen more, and it could add an alienesque feel to things. Of course if you had plenty of troopers in your base it would be a low risk scenario, but it may also give you more of an opportunity to use melee/stun weapons to put it back into isolation if you are studying it rather than having to kill it. Just food for thought though, as many may not find hunting down a single (unarmed) alien challenging enough. Though what if it was a Psi-ops alien or a tough Sebillian?

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