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[Gameplay Suggestion] Chinook Range


TornadoADV

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This is a minor, but rather important quibble I have right now. Unlike the Skyranger, the Chinook doesn't have global range, which means in the first couple of months, there is a very high likelyhood that a Terror Site will pop-up in a place you can't respond to at all and it costs you a ton of goodwill from the funding countries. This can happen sometimes 4 times in a row.

With the chance for air interception now by hostile alien fighters, Chinooks should be given global range and use the reason of in-flight refueling or stopping in airports or FOBs to refuel. If a player is willing to risk their team in a slow helo with no escort, that should be the chance they take.

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Perhaps its more a gameplay balancing issue, terror sites perhaps should be balanced to start a little later in the game, with perhaps some kind of re searchable upgrade to the Chinooks (e.g Hercules with longer range, but more expensive). Or, purchasable long-range fuel tanks for the Chinook from the get-go, that consume significant space (eg 4 or 6 slots). So you can respond to these far flung events, but with smaller numbers of troops in the early game. Later, if you decide to do the research and stump the cash, get a bigger transport that has the range and cargo space?

Just ideas.

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If your Chinook can fly a lot further then your fighters then your Chinook is gonna be a sitting duck. By the time you get terror sites you have plenty of alien fighter wings out and about. Plus not being able to protect the entire world on day 1 helps the whole "we're all gonna die" atmosphere.

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dont agree with this idea at all, you lose a terror mission biig deal, its not the end of the world or the game and it makes sense you should not have complete global operations within your 1st day

now if you had said alien base then maybe i would have some sympathy, i had an alien base at the tip of greenland and had to build a base just to be able to reach the damn thing, only i didnt have the money and by the time i had done this all i was at -250k for the month. i just couldnt deal with it due to money issues and had no time left so lost the save.

ever since this i instant build 2 bases in such a way that there is very little area for anything that i cant reach. within 2 weeks you have 2 operational bases and almost world coverage. adapt

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I think guys we might want to wait on the beta to see when new dropships become available. If the option to build a dropship comes shortly after you get to tier 2, then boosts for Chinooks becomes moot, because you can build a overall better dropship. If it doesn't, then perhaps stopgaps weould be appropriate.

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yes i posted about this a while ago. im with the extended range option. (*if new dropship is late advncement) a helecopter fuel cell upgrade would be lovely. and like pervious post stated id be more than happy to have half the capasity or even 1/3 as long as i could reach the areas of the map i needed to.

to make it simple for change all that would be neeed is a chanook varient (keep everything same but spots for soldiers and fuel range value) and would be a new build rather than an upgrade. and depending on what u have in store for the drop ship lvl the chanook upgrade could be right at start(when u get first aircraft upgrade).

this would allow flexability even in later games when you might be short of cash but really need a cheap long rang transport

(*if done the cost should be only slightly more than chanook ex chanook=200k, chanook varient = 250k)

this does assume you have not allready made the dropship improvement early and cheap

***one other thought has occured to me another option (*for those with cash to spare) is chanook one way trips. troups will be able to reach any area on earth but at the cost of the chanook being lost

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Gazz hyphenate!

I think any mechanic to increase the chinook range is a bad idea. (particularly the one where you sacrifice crew space for the ability to go to a HARDER mission where you really need that crew... that is just really REALLY bad design.)

Imo you should look into things like making the terror sites not appear outside the chinook range the first 2 months or incorporating 1-3 missed terror sites into the game balance (depending on if you want a safe option or if you want an atmosphere where you can be attacked from anywhere and have to bulk up to respond)

Didn't it take a while for the terror sites to start showing up in X-com? Maybe the terror sites should simply be postponed until such a time that players can have more then one base and thus be able to cover likely terror mission sites.

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Imo you should look into things like making the terror sites not appear outside the chinook range the first 2 months or incorporating 1-3 missed terror sites into the game balance (depending on if you want a safe option or if you want an atmosphere where you can be attacked from anywhere and have to bulk up to respond)

If missions only appear if the player has built a base in the vicinity, players would be advised not to build a 2nd base too early. That would be silly.

Personally, I'm for giving the Chinook sufficient range to reach every spot on Earth. It would be assumed that it makes frequent refueling stops. They just aren't modeled because that wouldn't be fun.

Early on that would be feasible because the aliens won't have a lot of CAP up. Now if you wait too long with building more bases, your Chinook could still get to the mission zone, it just won't arrive in one piece.

That's just another way to increase the threat as the game goes on. And I don't just mean more / bigger UFOs, like in every XCOM clone out there, but the aliens would "get smarter" and use different tactics.

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If we want to talk about realism, how is it realistic that the governments of the world would give you millions of dollars and all the guns you ask for but refueling at an airbase or aircraft carrier on your way to a terror mission is a deal breaker? Or for that matter, aerial refueling. These seem like things the governments would be more than happy to supply you with.

I get that the fighters would not have access to these things 24/7 because of the alien fighters and having to scramble at a moments notice, but maybe for terror missions and alien bases make their range unlimited because we could call in advance and say "hey we can't do anything unless you put a KC130 here to refuel us". Maybe make their travel time longer for missions that are further away(yes thats a dumb sentence but you know what I mean) to account for being refueled. That seems like a nice balance between realism and gameplay mechanics, considering if you fail they will nuke the city anyway.

Sorry Gazz, didn't see your post when I wrote that. I just think considering we do aerial refueling all the time for mundane missions(and this being the height of the cold war we were doing it a lot more even then) we could provide it to the guys trying to save the world. Or at the very least one of the research options could be more or less the blimp thing from the first scene:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WT3Ugkzl-Nk&feature=related

Edited by Irishguy117
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They wouldn't give you any money but will permit you and a refueling plane access to their airspace? Now that I've thought about it though its gonna bug me. And as for the later game craft, there's an interesting solution, give the chinook and only the chinook(or any other human helicopters) unlimited range. So the later game ones can go faster and carry more, but nobody else has alenium to refuel it with. It presents an interesting dilemma and makes upgrading more complicated, if you stay with the chinook you are guaranteed to get there(unless you're shot down) but it takes more time and you can carry fewer soldiers. Likewise once you upgrade you can carry more xenonauts into battle and react more quickly but there are some places that are out of your reach. I think that would be an interesting situation to have to deal with.

Just like from what I understand the late game weapons will be more powerful, but also more expensive and unwieldy, this way there's a pro and con to the different dropships rather than just late game/early game.

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I think a lot of people would be unhappy that the big shiny new dropship they had just built was unable to reach terror sites in the area they used to be able to cover with their old Chinook.

All that would do is force you to keep a Chinook and a hangar at all times in case something you couldn't otherwise reach appeared.

Unless you have lots of spare cash for a second standby ground squad it would also mean swapping troops between dropships depending on range to target.

It also requires a way to tell when something is out of your selected crafts range (not a bad thing) otherwise you may send the wrong dropship.

I think that would be a frustrating mechanic personally and not a fun way to do it.

I would prefer if early game the range to the terror site was taken into account in any penalty.

Anything clearly out of your zone of influence would penalise you less harshly.

Later in the game the governments of the world would be less understanding if you fail to respond.

I would also add a slight weighting in the early game so that terror sites are closer to your area of influence more often.

Not guaranteed to be something you can get to but enough to persuade you it might be a good idea to expand your coverage or make a ship with increased range.

Maybe the first terror mission you cannot reach could also be the reason you start researching longer range transports?

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The only option I'd consider acceptable for increasing the Chinook's range that doesn't impact on newer dropships would simply be the option to trade soldier space for fuel tanks.

Want to go further? Fine. But you'll lose three slots for each fuel tank.

It gives you options while allowing the newer dropships to actually be an improvement.

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It's something we'll look at in beta. But that's an interesting idea, Buzzles.

Also, the late-game aircraft don't require alenium to refuel - they just require alenium to build their power sources in the first place. I hate the feeling of bleeding a resource just to use something you've already spent ages building.

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Back in the old days terror sites were set up by terror UFOs. They we're quite large! Large UFOs don't appear early (see lore). Thus I conclude terror sites should not appear early!

In xeno terms, I would have terror sites only occur the moment corvettes start to show up because they have about the crew size that is encountered at a terror site.

Sure you could have multiple smaller UFOs land the troops. But then again why would the aliens do that. They should be busy scouting and devising strategies during the first month.

Devise a global plan for the aliens to follow instead of just having a set of activities and a rng select what they will be doing. Back than the aliens had missions (even researchable through navigator) and they were (or appeared to be) in a (crono)logical context.

That should fix the problem nicely, easily and realistic.

Better and more consequential as having terror sites only appear in range. (If the player improves his one base instead of expanding he chooses to risk terror sites out of range when they come available).

Easier to implement than refueling or add on range extension.

Adds immersion through the experienceable evolution of the alien thread: reconnaissance->disinformation/propaganda/terror->creation of footholds->full scale attack on military targets->scorched earth.

The last one probably after the point where the player could have turned the tables.

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I was fine with the idea of there being sites that you simply couldn't reach with the Chinook, both for terror and recovery missions. The reasoning being that it encourages you to build more bases, to cover the ground.

While Buzzles idea seems very interesting for terror sites, I could then use it for normal recovery missions, where I don't need a full squad anyway. That means I don't really have to worry about getting troops in extra bases any time soon.

So, on balance I'd go with what's there now, as the range/speed has already been tweaked.

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The only option I'd consider acceptable for increasing the Chinook's range that doesn't impact on newer dropships would simply be the option to trade soldier space for fuel tanks.

Want to go further? Fine. But you'll lose three slots for each fuel tank.

It gives you options while allowing the newer dropships to actually be an improvement.

I can agree with Irishguy117 and Buzzles.

Both options seem fine but I think the easiest and more realistic one is from Buzzles: trade soldiers for fuel

It's something we'll look at in beta. But that's an interesting idea, Buzzles.

I don't understand the arbitrary trade off of less soldiers for more range... how is that a good decision? Is it because that is the only trade that can be done for longer range, that makes sense "realistically"? what about longer flight time? what about.... ... .... I can't think of anything else to trade. It's the only option for a trade isn't it? Doesn't mean the trade idea is a good one. :(

I'd rather let the chinook have the range be able to circumvent the globe 2 times from the start, than giving it a boost through sacrificing soldier space.

I can't get over the feeling that no one has thought through this idea beyond the brainstorming part? why would you tempt the player with the possibility to let him reach a harder mission then standard UFO retrievals with less soldiers? This just seems like poor balancing or bad mechanics to me.

I think this trade idea just leads to counter intuitive gameplay. Does the player really need to always need to be able to reach every mission? Does the missions need to show up this early in the game? If so does the missions need to show up outside radar ranges in the early game? Why is the chinook range increase/change so important?

/ranting

Edited by Gorlom
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I think it needs to be said that since our troop transports can now be shot down, that the later dropships will be faster, more agile and be able to carry their own weapon systems should be enough of an improvement. This whole, "You need to build more bases to cover all potentional spots" Adds horrible monthly cost bloat to the Xenonaut budget. The choice should be, "I want to build more bases so I can react quicker with less chance of getting shot down." not, "I HAVE to build this base, otherwise, I can't defend X/Y/Z and my funding suffers even more!"

I found that XCOM addressed this point very well, Interceptors and Skyrangers had practically unlimited global range, but were either not armed or had comparatively low health compared to the later ships (and they were slow, which meant you had to intercept the target ASAP or get to that Terror site ASAP, you didn't get to choose where you fought or when.)

Edited by TornadoADV
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