Suggestion: Allienance: Wrath of the Xenonauts

[Gorlom]

In a mirrored, or possibly upside down or inverted landmass/water version of earth The ceasian clones peacefully go about their daily lives.

Screw plausability! Screw the original Xenonauts story! The Xenonauts are invading their peaceful little world.

Allienance: Wrath of the Xenonauts

With 3 000 shi.. wait what? Those aren't ships, what are they? They resemble flying movie sets representing their homeworld? What the bloody shiznook (alien curse pronounced cheesenox) are they doing in orbit?

The humans are invading by landing movie sets that are a few hundered square meters, filled with civilians and poorly trained/equippmed military on our world.

But each time we respond to a scene to clear the infestation out an elite force that goes by the name of "Xenonauts" shows up and starts stealing our technology, killing and abducting our men and scrapping our ships for materials.

It is up to you (as the Allienance commander) to negotiate an alien alliance and gather the other races to repell this uncalled for and totally unfair invasion.

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I've been inspired by the poster Gus (thanks for the title) in the latest announcement thread to rack my brain for a way to play the alien side. This seems to be the simplest way to implement it, although it has a bit of a parody feel to it and requires some suspension of belief/plausability plus a total disregard for the original story.

There are not really any major changes to the game play (except it's factions are flipped around) although it will rquire some tweaks and a different balancing then the normal one.

No Idea how to end the mod though. What would be the final battle? Invading some biggass museum (because the humans are trying to invade by forcing their culture onto the Ceasan homeworld, what better ultimate battleplan then to launch museums? ) Or maybe we/I should wait for the real ending of Xenonauts at release before making up stuff for the parodylike mod? Hmm maybe it's possible to

figure out a way to negotiate a way to include the Xenonauts into the "Allienance" So the last battle is to fight your way into diplomatic meeting and securing the room for x turns (or kill them all)

Playstyle essentially the same except you get points for killing the "local military force" and the civvies. negative points for lettting them flee (which they will do when the last xenonaut is killed or alternative objective (disableing their transport?) is completed

As there are no crashsites Airbattles between aliens and Xenonauts would have to happen when the Xenonauts launch an aircraft to intercept your UFO as it's heading toward the landed movie set to deal with the infestation.

What I/we would need the most for this mod is

1) Alien paper dolls (maybe we can just use the concept art)

2) The ability to tie in Xenonaut AI advancement into the ticker system, or possibly create our own events and tie them into the ticker system (is that possible to mo already already? or intended to be moddable perhaps)

3) Use the armour drop down list to chose races? possible that wouldn't be too hard...

4) New backgrounds for the base view screens. Could be provided by the community rather than development team artist. It is just a mod after all. (maybe we can just tint the humans grey and morph their forheads to look bigger and call them ceasans)

5) Ability to adjust the score gotten from killing stuff in ground battles (probably already possible)

6) I'm probably forgetting something big and important.

7) More to come....

Edit: 8) A way for players to trigger the mods nerfed versions of alien special abilities (like the "chryssalid" attack)

I would expect this mod to come to contain artificial difficulty that changes how things are represented from the main game. Like the chrysalid for instance: as a playable unit you would have to change the conditions for transforming a human into a zombie. Either make it deal a set ammount of damage and need to bring the unit down to below 10 hp or make it do a "facehugger" where it dies after infecting a unit. And probably make the zombie an AI controlled ally instead of player controlled. I hav no idea how modable the alien abilities will be.

I mainly want to discuss it (and come up with enough simple solutions or chortcuts) so that I might convince myself to take a gander at it (and most likely fail so horribly it becomes a parody of itself:p)

I know that suggesting something and hoping someone else picks it up and makes it a reality is not the bst way to go about it and extremly unlikely. I would probably appriciate it if someone did, but I'm not going to sit around and hope for/expect it by trying to necro this thread after it eventually dies (assuming I did not infact try it out myself).

PS: The vote is public, other people will be able to see what you voted for.

Edited June 30, 2012 by Gorlom

[Max_Caine]

The idea of invasion by culture rather than force is awesome and highly original. I think you could do this in a completely straight-faced way. Killing missionaries? Would that be an idea? Killing humans building landmarks of how awesome human culture is? So you totes could do muesums, because the invading humans would perhaps be making museums of how super awesome their culture is and everything they have done?

[Gorlom]

The idea of invasion by culture rather than force is awesome and highly original. I think you could do this in a completely straight-faced way. Killing missionaries? Would that be an idea? Killing humans building landmarks of how awesome human culture is? So you totes could do muesums, because the invading humans would perhaps be making museums of how super awesome their culture is and everything they have done?

That... was an unexpected thing to take away from my post, but I like the way you think

It was mainly a way my sleep deprived mind could explain the presence of civvies, local military and human architecture on an alien world

ON a sidenote: I wonder if you could apply the mechanic I intended for interception to work in multiplayer (if anyone ever bothered making such a thing)?

It would be different then the single player scenario but air combat and ground combat would essentially be the same. Imagine that missions pop up randomly on the geoscape map. Both sides send out a fighter wing/UFO and are intercepted by a AI controlled ship belonging to the other players faction. Beating the AI controlled ship means you get to proceede to the encounter with your transport. If both players succeed a geoscape battle starts. If one fails the other player wins by W.O. and recives some resources. If both fail they try again.

It doesn't make sense per se how the Xenonauts would know where to go bfore the aliens even get there, but it would allow for both players to play both the interception minigame and the ground battle while keeping the incentives to win. (as alien side would be conflicted about winning the airbattle since it would prevent a ground battle if they did)

[Max_Caine]

The idea of culture as a weapon is present throughout human history, although it is very often an unintended weapon. One of the theories behind the lost colony of Roanoke is that everyone upped and joined the native americans because native american culture was more attractive. Missionaries might spread the word of God, but they also spread the culture that was behind the word of God.

Concerning your sidenote. I really wish Ufo: The Two Sides was still up. They had screens showing you how they did a multiplayer Xcom. I have found some

. Perhaps you might find something there?

[Gorlom]

Personally I consider religion to be culture, or at least a major part/foundation. But I have some peculiar ideas about religion and we shouldn't discuss that here

That youtube vid doesn't seem to have any airbattle and I'm not sure I understand the aliens motivation to start groundbattles. the guy playing the alien is even saying "oh god you spotted one" as if its something negative.

Edited July 1, 2012 by Gorlom

[Max_Caine]

They weren't very good at explaining, were they? The videos really need a split screen to be honest so you can see what both sides are doing. In UFO: TTS, air battles like ground battles are completely controlled by both players. Both players have aggressive attack, standard attack, cautious attack, standoff and retreat modes. You basically click between modes depending on what you have. In TTS, the aliens have no motivation to start a ground battle - the humans do. Their spaceships all have mission types. You send an alien ship out on a mission to a part of the earth, they fly over, land, and start their mission. The humans then can either attack the alien ship on the ground or shoot it out of the sky. If the humans do nothing, the alien ship stays for x period of time, then returns to base. There's a lot more to it than that, but that's the basics.

[radister]

I voted other becuase i would play this mod becuase its silly!

not really that intrested in the idea, but i think it could be a laugh.

I could make jokes like to myself, like going in a room and destorying all the walls while going "Die Decoration and themed wallpaper!"

and I could even kill Civs without having to worry! you have no idea how much fun i'll have doing that!

"thats 5 mighty anoying defenceless units i killed with my overpowerful weapons that melt there faces off."

[radekus]

How about you play as the xenonauts who invade their planet?

[Gorlom]

Hahaha I had forgotten all about this suggestion. Thanks for reminding me Radekus ^u^