Cities and the geoscape

[Rodmar18]

Hello,

In Xenonauts I, cities were chosen so as to balance city-related mission over all the land and between founders. They could appear at different level of zoom on the geoscape, depending on their relative importance. They could all be struck by terror or aerial terror missions, and their population stat was the same for all (I don't know if it was ever used).

It appears that cities fell into several categories:

- political capitals (although not all were listed);

- economical capitals and metropolis (although not all populated centers were listed, even by 1980 standards (China, ...));

- strategic bases (Churchill, Punta Arenas (?)) (although not all, if any, strategic military or survey assets were listed)

The above takes in to account the mod Geographic Addition that added more locations and used more zoom level to not clog the geoscape.

 

Some ideas for Xenonauts 2:

• Balance city distribution as required, but use more levels of zoom so that the geoscape appears a bit like the Earth at night at the first any zoom levels.
• Use different icons, one for each (three) category of locations (notwithstanding icons for alien activity). This would allow to sort each category (capitals, metropolis, bases) by importance, and use zoom levels more efficiently.
• Take actual population into account to assess the number of casualties in case of bombardment, terror mission, or destruction.
• Use different mission lists for each category; at least, differentiate terror_megalopolis and terror_miltarybase.
• Also, have different consequences both on success and on failure in each category: loosing the entire population in Churchill would be negligible for Canada USA and barely affect the population's morale, but loosing their missile base (in the 1980s) at Churchill would anger and enfeeble their military.
• Use a better map: better projection system (not overgrown polar areas, we don't need to conserve angles but distances (radar and patrol ranges), even if vectors and trajectories are kept linear for simplicity of use), more resolution to benefit from another zoom level. Eventually, consider the 3D (geoid) system used by UFO: Alien Invasion.

 

 

 

Edited November 15, 2020 by Rodmar18