Secondary Mission Objectives

[Gorlom]

As a gamemechanic I see that working out better, and the motivation seems more reasonable to me. I'm just concerned that amjh seems to be after the whole "hopeless untill better tech" feel more then the function. If that is the case then he probably will keep pulling in a different direction.

[Gauddlike]

That's the beauty of a custom difficulty setting and editable xml files, you can make the game as hard on yourself as you want to

[xPDxTV]

That's the beauty of a custom difficulty setting and editable xml files, you can make the game as hard on yourself as you want to

Unless your like me and without step by step instructions will screw everything up trying to edit the files because i have absolutely no idea what i'm doing

[Gazz]

If the objectives are to hold out for a set amount of turns OR kill everything then you can choose to play it defensively or offensively.

It would probably have to be a rare mission type where the aliens have sent a larger ship, or more advanced troops, than are normal for the wave.

Some supposedly "secondary" missions just make a lot more sense as primary objectives.

A lot less messy, too, because I don't think the maps are big enough to pack them full of objectives.

What could work:

On the Geoscape you get to see the overall mission type, like Terror.

When your soldiers get to the scene, the objective gets more detailed. One time you may have to hold an evacuation area while civilians run towards it, other times you may have to assault and clear a bus depot or gas station and keep it "alive" for x turns. Or your orders are to simply sweep the area.

That way missions would not always play the same, which is the whole reason why secondary objectives were brought up in the first place.

Some missions types like UFO crash site recovery are a lot harder to create "varied" but even there it's not impossible.

If the UFO has crashed close to a city, you may end up with a defensive primary objective instead of just recovering the UFO bits. Another time, civilians have gotten to the crash site and have been zombified. Now you have to stop them from getting away. After x turns they start running towards the map edge...

I just think that more varied primary objectives are a lot easier to implement properly than an entire system of multiple objectives on the relatively small Xeno maps.

Better to do one thing right...

[Gauddlike]

True enough.

Even the crash sites can have a different objectives depending on some factors.

Maybe killing/capturing the highest rank would be an objective if the ship was too damaged to capture.

Certain ship types, like terror ships for example, might have a certain room that needs to be destroyed or certain alien types that cannot be allowed to escape.

A little variation can go a long way.

[Gazz]

With a single objective per mission (but variance as to the exact kind of objective) it will be possible to balance the number of actors on the map.

You can have aliens, alien heavy weapons, civilians, terran military units... but if you create the actors for multiple objectives on a map, you may end up with trying to protect civilians from a full blown heavy assault force - where your own soldiers have trouble even surviving, much less protecting anyone.

With primary objective variance you can assign a template for each mission type, generating a "protect civilians" mission with 60% regular aliens and 5% alien heavies. (% of the ship's regular complement)

An assault on an alien troop ship could get you 120% regular aliens and 100% heavies.

It's a relatively simple way to create different scenarios, depending on the tactical difficulty of the objective.

That way is workable with procedurally generated missions.

Real scripted missions with interesting secondary objectives are far better suited to hand-crafted individual maps where the entire scenario is balanced for playability.

[anotherdevil]

off topic a bit, but with some of the larger ships, if you crash them, or even destroy them, it might be nice if you instead of going for the main hip just have to attack the escape pod, or, go into a town that had the 'seeding' pods ejected into it (just made that up, but basically they'd be chrysalid containing pods...). So fewer in number, but they'd already be there as well as infected civies... More of a purge mission than anything else

[mrsisk]

I'm w/Gazz on the primary vs secondary mission thing. And Gauddlike stated what I was thinking (remove "terror mission" from your thinking and the idea becomes more logical). But it's only logical as a primary mission type. Hold a certain site, or set of buildings, or hill or whatever until an air strike on the enemy staging ground can be brought to bear. That kind of thing. I really like the idea of primary missions to protect an evacuation area until civies can get out.

I also like the idea of secondary missions based on specific research needs. Like after a new alien type (or weapon type) is encountered you'd get secondary missions to recover them (live in the case of alien types, undamaged in the case of weapons). I don't think that would really cause a balancing issue, it would act more like a nag screen to give you a hint of what you need to do in order to open up research trees.

But primary mission types is where we really need new variance, because the original XCOM really only had UFO recovery, terror missions, base assaults and XCOM base defense mission types. In the long haul at the end of the game, it became very repetitive.

[Gauddlike]

Yeah secondary objectives as reminders makes sense.

If this is the first time you have met Androns then the secondary objective could be to retrieve a corpse for examination.

Maybe you have already performed an autopsy so the objective would be to recover a live specimen.

If one of them takes a shot at you with a weapon you have never seen before then retrieving that may become a priority.

Not essential to the mission but something that would be useful to the whitecoats back at base.

Those objectives would need to update during the mission though or you would be able to tell what you were going to be coming up against just by looking at the mission brief.

If the system could track your base stores then it could add in recovery objectives depending on what you were short of.

Recovering a ufo power source intact if you are short of Alenium, capture a ufo with less than 50% damage if you are short of alien alloys etc.

Randomising the secondaries so you can have two or three a mission would be nice.

Even if you desperately need 5 different weapons and all of the alien types on that particular mission you would only want a couple of objectives or they would start to get in the way.

[Gazz]

Those objectives would need to update during the mission though or you would be able to tell what you were going to be coming up against just by looking at the mission brief.

Actually, that's a very good idea.

A "grab this" mission popup when you encounter XYZ for the very first time.

If you're quick off the mark and manage to secure XYZ on this mission... bonus points.

That can be alien gear, a new alien species to catch alive, an UFO datachip thingy...

Would make the missions seem more alive without requiring a complicated multiple-objective system as well as a massive increase of the balancing work.

Another possible popup mission would be encountering a few civilians on site when not expecting any.

(The typical First Victims™ that take a look at the crash site in any alien movie)

You're supposed to protect them anyway so it's basically redundant but that's not the point.

The mission seems more involved if you're getting a new mission objective on the fly...