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Automatic Ground Combat


czlukas

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I have a suggestion about the implementation of Automatic Ground Combat.

In first X-Com it just pissed me off, when i had to attack small crashed UFO, because it was just a complete waste of time (The missions are long and there're just too many of them).

Some newer UFO games like UFO Aftermath or Alien Invasion had some sort of automatic combat, so you didnt have to deal with theese easy but boring missions (Of course if you were too weak, you could just take the mission normally and win it with better tactics)

In Aftermath you could send a backup team instead, and some time after that you would receive a msg if they were succesful or not. In AI it was your team, but the game just did a calculation of used amunition, loses, kills etc etc...

I would really like to see on or the other in xenonauts for all those out there like me, who like the geoscope more then the actual ground combat.

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You'll be able to "click away" small time missions that you don't want to deal with. It's (most likely) going to be rationalized as having sent a cruise missile (tactical nuke?) to provide a final solution to localized alien menace. You're not going to gain any benefits doing this but it's going to prevent a PR hit from having ignored a mission site.

It's basically meant to cut down on mid/late game chores so, as you said, you don't have to deal with every little crash site and such when there's bigger fish to fry.

However this isn't going to allow you to avoid ground combat, not by a long shot. Not sure if some kind of auto-resolve is planned but I doubt it.

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it would be nice to have option of automatic resolution of ground combat ... at least for small UFOs (and maybe medium later, based on some technology or something like that). but certainly not for large UFOs or terror sites (or whatever their equivalent is in Xenonauts)

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I don't totally hate Ground Combat, but i try to avoid it when possible...

Of course I wont avoid large base attacks, or early assaults on crash sites, but when i have like 5+ teams to cover the whole world, i dont want to secure every little UFO that wont blow up and crashes instead...

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Seems to it yeah. If you don't/can't be bothered to do a crash-site, you bomb it. Downside is, you don't get anything from it beyond the relations points from shooting it down. If you want the loot, you have to do the mission.

Air combat will have auto-resolve though. But only if you've got a massive advantage in tech and numbers (basically, if you couldn't loose by engaging then making a cup of tea).

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There's another solution to all this: Make the more powerful aircraft weapons (the late-game weapons) completely destroy the smaller UFOs. That way, in the late game you won't have to deal with pointless missions. If one wishes to have the option of playing these missions they can equip a plane with weaker weapons.

Alternatively (and I think this is the optimal solution), maybe the late-game weapons could have two different firing modes, "Disable" and "Destroy", so the player can freely choose at any time to down the UFO or obliterate it. I think it would be easy enough to implement.

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Chris has said that at some point you will be able to ignore the smaller alien ships that are of no threat or benefit to you any more.

He rationalised it as some research that would allow the human nations to shoot them down and deal with the sites themselves.

It may just be the distribution of laser weapon plans etc.

I figured that would be good enough.

Having the little ones vanish from your radar as they are picked off by friendly nations feels like a better option than an auto resolved ground battle.

I don't know if that plan has changed though.

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There won't be any penalty for not attacking a crash site. If you don't want to do a ground combat mission, don't do it.

@Gauddlike: more advanced UFOs replace early game ones at the moment. That could easily be assumed because the local forces are taking on the earlier UFOs, but its not shown graphically. I'm unsure as to whether we should do that or not.

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Yeah adding a few events that just show "Alien scout ship shot down by local forces" or something should point players towards that conclusion.

If the change over is gradual then the local forces are adopting Xenonauts techniques and getting enough tech leaking down to them to be able to handle the odd scout.

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