Combat drugs

[Xeroxth]

I've been thinking about alien dissections and how in the early access only give you a flat profit by selling them living or dead. Maybe there should be tech trees allowing you to derrive combat drugs from alien corpses that give your soldiers slight temporary bonuses. At the start some of the drugs can be pretty mundane like painkillers (increase morale temporary) and adrenaline (give 10 to 20 emergency APs). But as the alien war drags on new research into alien biology can give soldiers drugs that let them partly mimic some of the alien powers. For instance regenerative shots made from sebilians that give you a slow regen at the end of every turn if you left 20 APs. Stealth serum which allows a soldier to be immune to alien overwatch for a single turn but deplete their APs for 1 next turn. Or vision enhancers derrived from mantid venom which improves your range by 50% but will reduce it for 2 turns after.

 

Of course this will take into account addiction that will heavily impact your troops in the long run and even kill them outright due to overdose. However if the player chooses they can turn their xenonauts into drug crazed monsters to fight against the alien menace. This will definitely sour relations with certain powers that fund your efforts.

[Ruggerman]

One of the biggest troubles with Drugs is the come down time, Yes great at the start, but how long do they last and when the effect wears off what happens to the soldiers after?

They would be a double edge weapon, and their is always a price to pay?

[Komandos]

Drugs are like a loan: you borrow one amount, and you need to give another (with interest). And perhaps some of the soldiers will be against the use of combat drugs.

I believe that it is advisable to add several types of "wounds" to the game:

- Wounded (Low health points).

- Weakened by drugs. (Little Action Points and Health)

- Weakened by stress (fatigue).  (Little Action Points and Health, bravery)

- Weakened by alien control (low bravery)

Edited August 17, 2023 by Komandos

[Xeroxth]

On 8/17/2023 at 7:25 AM, Ruggerman said:

They would be a double edge weapon, and their is always a price to pay?

Of course I agree wholeheartedly. Combat drugs will eventually kill your troops through overuse. But in exchange it makes you more powerful in only 1-2 turns when you’re desperate.

[Komandos]

If, after using drugs, a soldier has the status of "sick" for a few days (similar to the status of "wounded"), then it would be good.

[Raffik]

On 8/17/2023 at 2:25 AM, Ruggerman said:

One of the biggest troubles with Drugs is the come down time, Yes great at the start, but how long do they last and when the effect wears off what happens to the soldiers after?

They would be a double edge weapon, and their is always a price to pay?

I agree. I would be very careful with usage of combat drugs. 

One thing is to have adrenaline shots described earlier by @Xeroxth, able to save a soldier´s life in a critical situation (without significant negative impact on the soldier) or revive a soldier fallen in battle (which is in the game already portrayed by the chance of survival provided by the medical buildings build). It would be great though, if there would be an adrenaline shot available to revive a fallen soldier during tactical combat, that would be HUGE!

 

On 8/16/2023 at 9:15 AM, Xeroxth said:

I've been thinking about alien dissections and how in the early access only give you a flat profit by selling them living or dead. Maybe there should be tech trees allowing you to derrive combat drugs from alien corpses that give your soldiers slight temporary bonuses. At the start some of the drugs can be pretty mundane like painkillers (increase morale temporary) and adrenaline (give 10 to 20 emergency APs). But as the alien war drags on new research into alien biology can give soldiers drugs that let them partly mimic some of the alien powers. For instance regenerative shots made from sebilians that give you a slow regen at the end of every turn if you left 20 APs. Stealth serum which allows a soldier to be immune to alien overwatch for a single turn but deplete their APs for 1 next turn. Or vision enhancers derrived from mantid venom which improves your range by 50% but will reduce it for 2 turns after.

 

Of course this will take into account addiction that will heavily impact your troops in the long run and even kill them outright due to overdose. However if the player chooses they can turn their xenonauts into drug crazed monsters to fight against the alien menace. This will definitely sour relations with certain powers that fund your efforts.

On the other hand - drugs, that temporarily "mimic" alien abilities - the described ones already are available in the game through research (regen - Automed module, stealth serum - Stalker armour, vision enhancers - also in research tree, not disclosed yet - not for better range, as the range is determined by the weapon, not by vision of the soldier). 

Using allien biology research for crafting items for such use - due to the complete different and uncompatible biology (f.e. you do not take medicaments meant for animals, right? A dog is a creature from the same biological background and biochemical composition, would you like to take a drug for a dog let alone something other-worldly?), it would be a double edged sword, as @Ruggerman said.

If such substances would exist in the game, then I agree with @Komandos, that these should have also significant negative effect, which would harm the human user. The effects could be ones described in the above posts or the soldiers using those would have to be recovering for multiple days just as with injuries for example. Then, the question each player should have to ask himself would be - do I really need it?

 

Edited August 18, 2023 by Raffik

[cman1983]

I like this idea although would need make it harder to catch live aliens than to throw 4 smoke bombs or shoot there health to 10 n then smoke them as this then gets us advantage early doors

 

Also the soldiers should be able when a major injury or drug overuse say they want to retire and should be then used in like a memories screen and put into say the area from eg UK a soldier that we can use if a terror mission arises