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Abduction missions plan


Aaron

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As has been discussed, there is currently a bit of an issue with the early game, in that too many of the missions are simple light scout UFO ground assaults which quickly become tedious.

In order to alleviate this we plan to introduce a new mission type: Abduction missions.

The lore idea is that these missions represent small groups of aliens who are down on the surface (their UFO will not be present in the mission) and are hunting for humans (and probably hapless livestock) to abduct.

They will essentially be "mini" terror sites that start appearing right from the beginning of the game, except with fewer aliens and no civilians/friendly AI. They will be spawned occasionally by research mission UFOs when they land. If they are not dealt with in a certain time then, like a terror site, the aliens will escape with some abductees and the nation in which the attack took place will suffer a Xenonaut relations penalty. The size of these missions will probably also escalate as the game progresses.

The above is quite straight forward, but we have additional ideas for them:

Firstly, we specifically want these missions to be quick, given we are trying to solve the problem of too many Light Scout missions dragging on. As such, we are considering making them "timed", whereby once the mission starts the aliens will escape in X number of turns (once the turn timer is up the aliens will be teleport away to escape). The player would be rated on how many aliens they stopped from escaping - this should differentiate them significantly from normal UFO attack missions.

Secondly, the size of these missions will escalate as the game progresses. To start with they will be attacks on simple rural areas using the standard tiles, but we are also considering having later abduction missions possibly be more direct attacks on military bases. Military bases would be represented by re-purposed tiles from the Xenonaut base, and as such these would be indoor missions. In this case we would probably also have military personal defending the sites.

Finally, rewards - this is more of an open question: I would like to reward the player with something a bit special for doing these missions, both to differentiate them from UFO missions and to compensate for them not giving the player alenium/alloys/UFO cores. Any thoughts on what interesting rewards might be? Obviously we are limited by content we already have or could easily cobble together, but perhaps something interesting could be done.

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Finally, rewards - this is more of an open question: I would like to reward the player with something a bit special for doing these missions, both to differentiate them from UFO missions and to compensate for them not giving the player alenium/alloys/UFO cores. Any thoughts on what interesting rewards might be? Obviously we are limited by content we already have or could easily cobble together, but perhaps something interesting could be done.

Fluff research! Hats! non-combat pets! experience boost!

Crap I can't think of any relevant rewards.

If decide that the aliens require an onsite teleporter to teleport out you could still give aleminium and other booty... As well as give a secondary mission objective to destroy it (which would end the battle as the aliens can't teleport out anymore but they would still flee like when you hold a UFO for 5 turns)

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The problem I can see with timed missions is that it will encourage the player to be more reckless (rushing to expose the map), which in turn is likely to cause higher casualty rates; for me part of the slow pace of ground combat is because I advance from cover to cover very carefully, because being out of cover is often a death sentence.

I can't think of any rewards except for it giving a big boost to your relationship with that nation.

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I'm all for mission diversity, but a timed alien hunt don't seem that fun to me. The indoor/base alien cleansing mission sounds really good though, and it would be logical that armed forces would call upon Xenonauts in case one of their bases is overrun.

To alleviate the monotone scout cleanup mission, why not give the option to bomb crash landed ships with your planes. This would give a small relation boost(less than a standard clean up) and a smaller alienium reward. No artifacts would be recovered from the crash site. This way you can skip cleanup with a small penalty, or do the standard mission if you need the materials.

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We already plan to implement the "bomb the site" option too, but that solves a different problem than the abduction missions - bombing the site is something you can do if you are just overwhelmed by missions in general, whereas abduction missions are intended to provide variety when you do decide to go on a mission.

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You should add a Super-Alenium that self destructs if you don't recover it fast enough...

:P

On a more serious note, I really like this idea. As for a reward, maybe less cash but more standing gain? That would give us differentiation in rewards between mission types (UFOs- tech/cash, Bombing cash/standings, Abduction standings/small cash). Or if you don't mind borrowing from Firaxis, adding some sort of random gain (randomly getting more cash, more standing, slightly experienced soldier).

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How about the next x soldiers being cheaper to hire? Some of the would-be abductees might decide to stick it to the aliens and try to sign up. Or the council is grateful for your efforts and cut you a bit more slack. The more successful you are in the mission, the greater the bonus.

Or maybe a +detection rate bonus for a certain amount of time, due to extra intel from the mission, or the military base paying back the favour as best they can.

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I would say that staff, both to hire and to keep are the biggest single expense that the commander has. You could do any sort of thing with staff and it would have an immediate and tangible feel to the reward. For example:

  • Some or all of the wages are paid
  • It becomes cheaper to hire x staff (Stinky's suggestion)
  • Get x staff (soliders, scientists or engineers) as a reward (a la XCOM2012)

Or if you didn't want to go that way, the air war is a significant section of the game. Any modification there would also be tangible. Such as:

  • Have any aircraft in recovery/repair instantly recovered or repaired
  • Aircraft repair time sped up for the next wave
  • Condors are cheaper/instant to buy for x time
  • Manufacture time of aircraft is sped up for x days
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Hmm... rewards...Skitso has a good idea with soldiers but it'd also need something more interesting... o.O how about the aliens are targeting former Xenonaut operatives with these abductions and as a reward you unlock a piece of fluff about the organization's past ( I personally would love to read about stuff like that ) and maybe even a soldier, possibly either a reckless son/daughter of the former operative or the operative him/her-self or a old piece of kit which is just a item with a custom skin, something along those lines. This would give the missions a more personal touch in my view (you get lore, you get a trinket and you have a reason to do it, defending your own).

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I would say that staff, both to hire and to keep are the biggest single expense that the commander has. You could do any sort of thing with staff and it would have an immediate and tangible feel to the reward. For example:
  • Some or all of the wages are paid

  • It becomes cheaper to hire x staff (Stinky's suggestion)

  • Get x staff (soliders, scientists or engineers) as a reward (a la XCOM2012)

Or if you didn't want to go that way, the air war is a significant section of the game. Any modification there would also be tangible. Such as:

  • Have any aircraft in recovery/repair instantly recovered or repaired

  • Aircraft repair time sped up for the next wave

  • Condors are cheaper/instant to buy for x time

  • Manufacture time of aircraft is sped up for x days

Very insightful post as allways Max :D

Although I have some concerns.

Becoming cheaper/faster to hire/manufacture seems like a reward that could potentially be pointless if you dont need any of it at the time. Would imo make the missions themselves seems pointless and trite.

Getting a random soldier, scientist or engineer could have a negative effect on your budget (as you need to pay wages). If you get this kind of mission often enough it could be more of a bother or even penalty then a bonus.

wages paid off, aircrafts getting repaired, soldiers getting healed or temporary radar improvement seems like the best alternative rewards (to standing, loot or money). Although I have a bit of a hard time motivating why you would get such rewards. :S

Maybe you could have a repeatable research topic (once for each time you do the abduction mission type) that causes ceratin effects? That way you get to choose the timeing of the reward at least.

Alternativly the repeatable topic needs to be researched as set ammount of times to reveal some fun permanent thing.

Edited by Gorlom
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as a reward you unlock a piece of fluff about the organization's past ( I personally would love to read about stuff like that )

I would too but unless Chris has changed his mind about research he doesn't want fluff research. Everything is supposed to unlock something afaik last i heard.

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I personally don't think there needs to be a special reward for this. Having more mission types adds the variety that's needed already. Shouldn't need to have an incentive to do a special ground mission type. Don't focus on making people want to do ground missions- just focus on making the scenarios interesting and varied.

However, that said: I recommend adding a terror unit of some sort to each mission (even the early ones) and/or a higher ranked alien to serve as the 'leader' of the abduction crew (but not armed heavily).

I love that this one will be timed. Some will complain, but that doesn't matter. Putting us out of our comfort zone and adding tension is great for changing pace.

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If it's an abduction mission, why aren't there any people to abduct?

Maybe add civilians, but making the aliens use some kind of stun grenades against them only?

Maybe a special alien stun weapon? Looks like a normal alien plasma pistol/rifle/whatever but has a purple firing animation? (Unlock improved stun gas?)

Ideally, the aliens would drag the unconscious bodies to a teleport pad and send them off to a UFO waiting for them. Perhaps it'd be as simple as making the aliens pick up the stunned bodies and walk to a certain location and dump them on the ground. Any bodies left in the location are lost when the ticker times out.

As far as rewards go, a large funding boost would be nice, and slowing/reversing the alien ticker would be really nice. Depriving them of research materials, and the like. Can't have it be too much, though, otherwise you could just do every "abduction mission" and keep the aliens at square one forever. (You wouldn't be able to progress much in terms of research, but you could max out funding and amass a fortune in terms of money).

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I keep thinking of a weapon with boosted stats. But I'm not so sure that wouldn't be unbalancing. If these missions would predominantly be early game they could just be boosted ballistic weapons, that way they'd make the early battles a bit easier but become irrelevant as you moved up the tech tree. Oh, and it'd have to have recoloured art of course, or a unique design. ; )

No fucking gold guns though. Keep that bling to yourselves.

For an idea that's perhaps less of a non-starter... Fluff (lore) research from aliens captured before they introduce better operational security, boosted detection rates through artifacts the aliens were carrying, before they introduce better operational security.

Free milk from grateful cows, leading to temporarily boosted stat gains for soldiers?

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[Hello, new to the forums, been following Xenonauts for a while now and felt like adding my opinion.]

If the purpose of this mission type is to serve as a "spicing" for the early game so that its not only light scouts, you might as well use them to give players a tool o adress the main duress of the early game: namely the need to get money from selling alien weapons, increasing country relations to get more money at the end of the month and get reseach artefacts to be able to survive the mid game.

Since its supposed to be a "terror-lite" mission you can have no civilians for the alien AI to shoot at but still have civilian presence (they could be encased in pods that serve as props but give you negative score if you break them) and even an increased armed civilian presence to help you out (once armed forces AI is improved).

Regarding Rewards:

If you go through with the "timed mission" plan then you may indeed need a diferent reward that justifies having to play more recklessly, or you can design the maps in such a way that you can find all the aliens easily, the hard part being killing them in time (lizards take forever to kill with balistic weapons).

Some suggest free personel as reward, which is a bigger and more tangible incentive early game than a region relationship boost (which should be present anyway since you are doing a mission there).

You could make aliens killed in these missions worth double the points of aliens in regular missions (though I dont know the details on how the mission score affects relations).

Reducing the alien ticker by a bit may be good as well since you are always on a non-stop race to get the upgraded weapons, vehicles, and armor since the game starts because you want to be ready in time for when the aliens get serious.

That the mission is a way to have more mission variety and the variety is the reward itself is good too, but then id rather ignore those mission in favor of the regular ones were i can use all the turns I want to ensure my soldiers stay safe.

Regarding "more mission variety":

I think Firaxis´s X-COM:EU, despite all its flaws, managed to introduce some interesting mission ideas that helped variety a bit (escort the VIP, timed bomb mission), but there is quite a bit of potential for more mision variety in Xenonauts, and maybe even a "breather"-type mission would be good.

There is also always the posibility of "help the local forces fight" missions that have several soldier NPCs to help you fight aliens that can serve as "breather" missions combined with fleshing out the world´s narrative.

TFTD also had artefact and the terror cruise missions (though I dont think many people want to experience the ships ever again).

UFO:Aftermath also had "just scout out the aliens" missions among others that were not about killing everything, though those may not fit the style of Xenonauts and X-COM since Aftermath´s world is already half blown to bits when the game starts.

The posibilities are endless as long as there is suficinet time and money of course.

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While thinking about how we could incorporate actual abducting into the "Abduction Mission" idea, I came up with this "Rescue Mission" idea.

Ideas, comments, criticisms, feedback, etc are welcome. :)

Rescue Mission:

Gameplay Description:

You start off with a timer showing "X Turns Until Aliens Escape" or something along those lines. The goal is to rescue some humans that have been abducted by the aliens and placed into stasis pods for transport (this eliminates having to deal with the civilian AI).

The stasis pods are connected to a teleporter device prop, which at the end of X turns will teleport the stasis pods away. At that time the aliens will also be beamed up (simply "escape" in gameplay terms), though independent from the stasis pods (they all have ST:TNG combadges or something, no need for a transporter pad for them). The stasis pods should be in some kind of defensible position (maybe the aliens can have put up barricades or something) that some aliens are programmed to guard.

The mission ends when the timer hits 0. If you have destroyed the transporter device (preferably without destroying too many of the stasis pods too) you win. If the device is intact when it hits 0, you lose (and take large penalties for each stasis pod that survived to be transported away. It's better to kill the hostages than to let them be transported away.) Alternately, you can simply kill all the aliens before the timer hits 0; that wins the mission and prevents the hostages from being transported out too.

Sample Briefing:

"Extraterrestrials have abducted humans for interrogation/experimentation and have placed them in stasis pods for transport. Rescue the hostages before the aliens teleport them away."

Objectives:

  1. Kill all aliens within X turns.
    -OR-
  2. Destroy the teleportation device, preventing the aliens from teleporting them away, within X turns.
    (If you kill all the aliens after destroying the device while waiting for the timer to finish, then you'd win under Objective 1.)

Losing Conditions:

Time runs out before you either kill all aliens or destroy the teleport device

Bonuses and Penalties:

Among the bonuses you normally receive, you get:

  • Good bonuses for surviving stasis pods.

Among the penalties you normally receive, you get:

  • Destroyed stasis pods (the props get destroyed) get a small penalty
  • Aliens Escaped (if you won using objective 2 or you lost)
  • Stasis pods teleported away (heavy penalty here; it should be better to kill the hostages than to let them fall into alien hands and be interrogated, tortured, and vivisected)
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(they could be encased in pods that serve as props but give you negative score if you break them)

Ha, looks like we had similar ideas. Even if my rescue mission doesn't go anywhere, we should at least have something along the lines of hostage stasis-pods containing the civilians being abducted. Saving those should give us bonuses, destroying them should give us negatives, letting them be transported away should lose the mission (since our objective was to keep them from being abducted, and we let them).

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For every pod that gets away a Reaper is added to the next mission? :)

I want a mission like this to have aliens in buildings. Having to hunt through cellars and bedrooms for the telepad sounds hectic, especially if you have sniper fire from nearby houses without the pad necessarily being there.

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Having to hunt through cellars and bedrooms for the telepad sounds hectic, especially if you have sniper fire from nearby houses without the pad necessarily being there.

Having to search through cellars, inside buildings and 2nd floors with the limited TU pool your soldiers have at the beggining, on a timed mission seems like a counter-intuitive design to me. Or at least, quite challenging.

If its timed you want a small map with open spaces (filled with small and varied cover of course), or at least spaces were your line of sight wont be inconveniently blocked like the desert and artic maps.

If its timed you want to be engaging the aliens as soon as posible since taking out a single alien on the first month can take 1-5 turns depending on positioning and cover. If its a bunched up group of aliens (as im assuming its going to be) hoding out it can take a whole lot more if you arent using explosives (since you dont want to get the pods caught in an explosion from a grenade/rocket; if we are using people pods in the first place).

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I would too but unless Chris has changed his mind about research he doesn't want fluff research. Everything is supposed to unlock something afaik last i heard.

They'd be fluff you'd be rewarded within the form of a item with a longer description or something like that (ex: a old diary of a former Xenonaut containing a small snippet of information or a eyewitness account of the Icelandic incident, etc). No research required, just information for the Hell of it :) .

Edited by NoirWolf
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