Expanding Cleaners

[Goldminermac]

Cleaners are a great idea. They serve as a simple introductory enemy and help further the cold war theme of the game by representing the fears of infiltration and subterfuge associated with cold war hysteria. As is they hardly accomplish these goals, being only found in a rare few scripted missions and not being particularly different from any other enemy. I have a few ideas on how to fulfill these goals.

 

IDEA ONE: "Cleaning" UFO Crash Sites

Why are the cleaners called the cleaners? It seems like their purpose is to hide the existence of the aliens from the world, so a great way to do this would be by having them interfere with UFO crash sites. For the first day after crashing, UFO crash sites remain the same as now. On the second day however the cleaners have arrived. The local forces and civilians spawn as corpses, and there are several cleaner agents spawned around the level according to difficulty making the mission more difficult. On the third day the cleaning is almost complete. The aliens have been evacuated to safety by the cleaners, with all alien enemies replaced by a large number of cleaner soldiers and all alien corpses and technology removed. The disappearance of the UFO after three days can be explained by the cleaners dismantling the craft and removing evidence of the crash. 

This change would add urgency to responding to crash sites perhaps motivating players to not always wait out night missions, as waiting a whole day would add agents to make the mission harder and waiting two would remove most of the rewards besides alloys and alenium from the UFO itself, meaning there will be no tech to research or aliens to capture or kill for autopsies and interrogations. This change would also give incentive to eradicate the cleaners, as doing so would permanently end cleaner interference at crash sites. Finally as cleaner soldiers are likely easier to deal with than aliens, this could allow players who have lost all their valuable equipment/good soldiers to possible be able to get back on their feet by taking down mostly cleaned crash sites, which would give them raw materials to build more equipment at the cost of gaining no technology progression.

 

IDEA TWO: False Flag Attacks

Cleaners could also make combating the aliens more difficult by serving as a distraction and pitting humans against each other. Cleaners will randomly create false flag attacks, especially in regions with low panic. These would serve as mini terror missions taking place in cities, military bases, arctic outposts, etc where you must accomplish tasks like disarming bombs or eliminating all cleaners, or some other unique objective, in a limited amount of turns to prevent a large panic increase and/or regional funding decrease due to the cleaners framing a human nation or faction for the attack and creating a diplomatic incident, distracting the region from their commitment to the Xenonauts.

These missions would create varied conflict outside of scripted story missions like the current cleaner missions. They would also fulfill the niche of missions that can occur even if you are shooting down all the alien UFOs as your air superiority won't have any effect on cleaner activity.

 

IDEA THREE: Search Teams and Base Defense

The tutorial sets the precedent that cleaners will attack your bases and that you need to stay hidden from them. An interesting way to integrate this into gameplay would be through the cleaners setting up search teams. Randomly cleaner search team headquarters missions will appear in regions with Xenonaut bases, where the cleaners have set up a headquarters for a field team that will counter Xenonaut activity in a region. If the mission is not responded to within a comfortable amount of time (10 days to a month, nothing that urgent), the location of an unrevealed base in your region will be revealed to the cleaners. The Search Team missions themselves are simple, where you have to storm a small cleaner compound in a city, the wilderness, a harbor, etc and kill a VIP. Doing so successfully will end the mission and your base will not be discovered. The usage of the VIP elimination mission type also makes that objective able to appear repeatedly throughout the game instead of just in a few scripted missions, building variety.

Cleaner base attacks will function differently from alien ones. While aliens attack as retribution for shooting down UFOs, cleaners will attack any base they know about without provocation. This means bases without hangars are not safe which gives you an extra incentive to respond to search team missions that might reveal them, and also to build defenses and station soldiers at every base you have. 

 

IDEA FOUR: More Cleaner Enemy Types

Cleaners are supposed to just be regular humans, and an interesting way to use this concept would be to have them mirror the Xenonauts in their combat style. Cleaner enemies could come specialized into the general roles available to the Xenonauts. While cleaners would stay as one enemy type they could be equipped with a wider range of weapons. Cleaner riflemen would make up the majority of cleaner forces and be the same as current cleaner soldiers. Cleaner snipers would stay still and keep a distance from enemies. Cleaner shotgunners could throw smoke grenades and shoot your soldiers at close range. Cleaner heavies could wear heavy armor and use a machine gun to suppress your troops with low accuracy fire. Cleaner grenadiers could destroy cover used by your soldiers to force you out of position. Cleaners with shields would throw lethal grenades and need to be flanked similar to a cyberdrone, but without automatically turning on hearing sound. Finally a MARS like vehicle operated by the cleaners could serve as a boss type enemy with a cannon or rocket launcher and autocannon. Finally to emphasize their mind controlled nature cleaners could be immune to morale failures when an alien serving as a commander is nearby (As a reference to the VIP cleaner cell missions where aliens are in the field giving orders to the cleaners), and most major cleaner missions would have a Psyon present serving as this commander, with the weakness of having very low morale when a commander isn't alive, giving incentive to pick the commander off early, and making cleaners in minor missions without commanders like UFO crash sites easier to deal with.

These changes would help to make cleaners a more varied enemy to fight and a proper faction in their own right distinct from the aliens. The cleaners with special roles would be rare, making up only a small portion of cleaners in missions who would still mostly be the default rifle goons for simplicity, and would be introduced gradually with the cleaners gaining their whole arsenal of troops around the beginning of the midgame, as cleaners are supposed to serve primarily as early game enemies.

 

IDEA FIVE: Cleaner Data

While slowly revealing the cleaner cells and then the cleaner base that you can take down to end the cleaner threat for good is a solid idea, progression towards ending the cleaners is automatic and doesn't feel very rewarding, more like waiting out a timer than making progress. A solution to this is to make the cleaner progress only increase upon the acquisition of cleaner data, and to have cleaner data present in all cleaner missions. The starting office mission could remain the same, with getting cleaner data as a mandatory objective and to introduce players to the concept, but cleaner data could be present in all cleaner missions. Search Team Headquarters mission maps will have optional cleaner data items accessible from computers. Alternatively, cleaner progress can be increased directly if you capture cleaners alive and then interrogate them for a small progress bonus or capture and interrogate a Psyon cleaner commander for a much larger amount of progress.

The final mission would function similarly, becoming available after reaching 100% cleaner progress, but an interesting idea would be to make it a two part mission like the final mission of the first X-COM game on Cydonia, with one mission on the arctic surface and the second portion in the underground facility, as the added difficulty would match the increased significance of ending the cleaners once and for all due to their increased importance.

[Raffik]

On 9/18/2023 at 5:56 AM, Goldminermac said:

IDEA ONE: "Cleaning" UFO Crash Sites

Agree. This has been a topic in various discussions before and still pops out every now and then. Definitely this would add a feel of threat from the cleaners and give the game more immersive feel.

Reward for a shot down UFO would have to be picked up immediately or within a shorter time. After the timer expire, the UFO crash site would be "cleaned" and no reward nor items would go to the player.

On 9/18/2023 at 5:56 AM, Goldminermac said:

IDEA TWO: False Flag Attacks

Good idea. The cleaners could attack strategic targets, such as military bases or ICBM silos in attempt to raise geopolitical tensions/panic in a certain region. Some other geoscape events should trigger tactical missions, such as ship attacks or attempted assasinations.

On 9/18/2023 at 5:56 AM, Goldminermac said:

IDEA THREE: Search Teams and Base Defense

Definitely agree. Attack on your base(s) by the cleaners should be reality, similarly to the tutorial mission. The search teams elimination to protect the locations of your bases sounds good as well. Could be the cleaner Intel missions reversed, they would get data on you.

Also, after the player conquers the cleaner base, it could be attacked by the cleaners multiple times in attempts to get it back (and all player bases uncovered by the cleaners could experience cleaner attacks as well) in retribution.

On 9/18/2023 at 5:56 AM, Goldminermac said:

IDEA FOUR: More Cleaner Enemy Types

Has been also mentioned before, that would be great. I would like to see a heavily armed cleaner unit with a machine gun or rocket launcher (the RL is not in the game, perhaps it could be captured just as the cleaner accelerated weapons and equipped by your soldiers)

Perhaps the cleaners could evolve with the player as well to pose a threatening enemy for longer period of time (say at least 100 days with less alien activity during that time. After cleaners are gone, the alien activity would increase significantly), not only introducing agents and soldiers with changing weaponry, but also bring in a new, alien technology based hybrid unit to support the agents and soldiers.

Recently I saw concept art of a Thrall, which seemed to be a hybrid of a human body and prostetic arms/weapons. I'd love to see that in combat with the cleaners as it could resemble an andron or MARS but unique to the cleaners.  The cleaner thrall would have enhanced movement, enhanced carrying capacity, enhanced reflexes, medium armour, prostethic weapon(s), immune to gas/stun and therefore the most advanced cleaner unit (or alternatively the andron could support the cleaners)

On 9/18/2023 at 5:56 AM, Goldminermac said:

IDEA FIVE: Cleaner Data

There was an idea some time ago, that cleaner data could reveal an impostor in your ranks as well, then it could triger some interesting tactical missions against your own troops or some other human faction - say a rogue army general and his army group, brainwashed by the aliens/cleaners and threatening to attack with nukes.

Agree, that now the progress is automatic and feels very easy by just waiting. If you bring more cleaner data, the progress does not seem to be affected (or I havent noticed). Getting progress by capturing the data is a good idea, however on the toughest difficulties it could become almost impossible to achieve, so it would have to be balanced out.

[ooey]

Some good ideas here. Like the sound of a "find the Impostor" mission the most! If not found perhaps he can try to run amok in your base.