Additional Mission Types

[Ishantil]

So I know that this is probalby low on the priority list, but more mission types would be awesome.

Ideas:

Take and Hold: Xenonauts arrive to find that aliens have taken over an important building (power plant, pancake factory, etc). They have to clean out the location and hold it for five turns. No UFO in this mission, but the reward is better relations with the country in question.

Rescue (VIP): A VIP of a country is in danger of being killed or abducted. Xenonauts are called in and rescue the VIP. Player has to secure the VIP and guard him for five turns before transport can arrive. No UFO in this mission, but the reward is better relations with the country in question.

Rescue (pilot): A downed fighter jet recently shot down has been attacked by the aliens, intent on abducting the pilot. Player has to secure the pilot and get him back to the dropship before the aliens can abduct him. If the aliens secure the pilot for five turns, the player loses. UFO is present in this mission, and exits their craft to secure the pilot.

Rescue (downed airliner): Aliens have shot down an airliner and are in the process of abducting the passangers and crew. The Xenonauts arrive to stop the abduction. Similar to a terror mission except there is a crashed airliner with civilians inside. Mission is to destroy all the invading aliens.

[thothkins]

Some more mission types can be found here

[Ishantil]

Thanks for the link, I should have known you had already thought of this

[Max_Caine]

Great minds think alike.

[thothkins]

thanks for going with that half of the saying Max. It may not be true, but it was the tactful option

[Ishantil]

touche!

[thothkins]

I was referring to myself. Just more so since you can type in French

[EchoFourDelta]

These all sound like badass ideas. Right now we have ground attacks on crashed UFOs, terror missions, and base attacks. This is cool, no doubt, and perfectly representative of the original stable of ideas brought over from X-COM, but some degree of variety, in more expansive environments would be awesome for breaking up the monotony of these three things.

Edited August 7, 2013 by EchoFourDelta

[GizmoGomez]

Great ideas, stuff like this would definitely add to the playability of the game and reduce monotony by a great deal.

My question is, how would/should these ideas be implemented, using the current game as a model?

What sprites would we use for the pilot and the VIPs? (Since the others can simply use various civilian sprites).

We would need to create an airliner and a fighter jet in the ground combat map stuff. We'd also need to create designated "important" buildings. We would ideally have a few different airliners and jets to use, so the map could randomly decide which to use. Same with the important buildings.

A few ideas:

Take and Hold:

How about the chinook spawns in the center of the map, next to a facility? Then you have to stay there inside the facility while aliens spawned all around the edges of the map all come at you from all directions? You could have it be kill all aliens or hold the place for ten turns, say (because five may be too little, what if the aliens are slow in getting there?)

VIP:

For this to work we would probably have to make it essentially like the Take and Hold, except theres a civilian inside the building that wanders around inside the building. Also, would we be able to stun the VIP so he's safe, or should stunning him lose the mission (or simply lose points after winning?)

[StellarRat]

The "rescue" a VIP and pilot mission types would probably require additional program code for checking the victory conditions. Obviously, keeping the VIP alive would count for a lot of points, while the VIP getting killed would be a huge number of negative points. Also, you'd have to have a different sprite to help ID the VIP. I'm assuming the aliens couldn't fire at him or would they be looking for him to kill him? The airliner one seems pretty straight, it's bascially a terror mission with a plane and a lot of civilians concentrated in one spot, at least at the start.

[Ishantil]

I was hoping to get some good discussion going. Unfortunately, many of the ideas in this post are based on creating sprites or adding code to the game. I'm hoping that after the game is actually complete, the staff will be willing to put in some hooks for modders to add some neat stuff.

[GizmoGomez]

Well, the missions wouldn't have to require new code or sprites.

We could have a mission that simply has aliens assaulting a military base, and the xenonauts are called in to help assist the base defense. Just have a military base (we have assets for that) with lots of local forces and local forces corpses (we have assets for these too) and just have the chinook spawn in the center of the base, with aliens spawning at the edges, or coming from one or two sides. No UFO, it'd be like a terror mission, but instead of you seeking out the enemies, they'll come to you.

So, I guess, basically it's just a base assault for local forces, instead of for aliens or for Xenonauts.

Protect the base, especially the HQ in the center, don't let all of the local forces die, don't let the military staff in the HQ die. Just make sure that every alien will always head for the HQ and never just camp out somewhere; make them aggressive so you don't have to hunt down any, they should come to you.

Just make it a random event that spawns in certain parts of the world. We could make local bases for the various tile sets too, to give them more legitimacy and make them more realistic (because who finds a desert base in siberia, I mean, really? )

I'd suggest double minus points for letting military staff die, that's a big no no.

[StellarRat]

How do you handle the VIP not being killed or freed? That seems like new code to me.

[GizmoGomez]

I wasn't saying that all of his suggested missions wouldn't require new code, just that we could implement new missions without needing new code.

[StellarRat]

Got it.

[Ishantil]

More great ideas. My aim was to try to break up always having the same kind of missions. Help grant some variety.

[Max_Caine]

The game recognises the idea of "key props". While I haven't yet tried it out, if you wreck too many key props in a base module, it's supposed to either shut down or be reduced in effiency. So it's not that much a stretch to make a VIP or other key item a key prop with a win/loose condition attached to it.

[Targe]

I miss the old cattle mutation mission where you find a cut up cow on the operating table in the abductor ufo in xcom EU. Always made me chuckle...

[GizmoGomez]

Ha, lets add it in! Modders, do your thing!

[Max_Caine]

Kayoh. Find me a good artist on the cheap.