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Abduction missions plan


Aaron

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I was going to suggest pretty much the same as GlyphGryph on page 5.

As for rewards, I don't know if soldier progression is mostly done yet, but maybe these missions could be an opportunity to give big upgrades to soldiers. Something to have for fun early on ,since most soldiers are likely to be horribly killed anyway when you encounter new alien types you can't deal with very well. The boosts you'd get to soldiers could just be normal progression, but instead of the sort of uniform slow type, a solider could be predetermined to go heavily up in 1-3 stats during these. So they would also only go up in those 1-3 stats later on, to keep them focused instead of becoming eventually 'uber'. For those 1 to 3 stats they may get really high really fast, but nothing else would change, so you'd have some reasonable mini-chance, or at least hope of keeping some soldiers until late game, hopefully this would be an incentive to use them for their talents while you don't have very good technology instead of being prone to want to level up soldiers and sit them in the base for later, I have never liked the idea of doing that.

I started thinking too that these sorts of missions are just what xenonauts needs to stay fun for years after release, if modders had ways to control what the alien/civilian/military or otherwise semi-alive thing on the map is doing AI-wise, objectivewise... either generally where all units start and exactly where if needed. Also conditions for this mission happening, frequency, sequence in the course of the game, tech requirements for it to happen, even monetary or resources requirements for it to happen, whether alien or standard items or base modules. Then, modders could make up all kinds of new mini scenarios to go along with custom maps made for them, or even multiple maps for the mini scenarios.

Sort of off-topic, but related to new mission types , I haven't played base defense yet but I think this kind of thing would be cool :

Aliens send a few aliens to do recon on your base layout. You might not even know they get there, and in that case no tactical combat happens. Increasing chance that you detect and attack those scouts the more soldiers you have on a particular base.

After they scout the layout, they might invade wit the purpose of only destroying a specific facility or facility type. Imagine losing all stores, or instead all research labs, or instead all radars... But those kind would be a little easier to defend against and a little weaker, also the aliens would be at a disadvantage because they have to make themselves more vulnerable than usual , most of them going straight for the facilities they want to destroy. You might be able to pick up on which one or ones they're going after during the tactical combat. Different races would have different tactics for doing that, caesans might sacrifice themselves using large explosives. Maybe some kind of new tech to make a base safer against these kinds of attacks too, like a door/wall upgrade like in the game FTL. They could also protect more against bombing from the sky , so that you might only have to repair facilities instead of needing to build new ones. Facilities under repair wouldn't be able to be used but would be back up much faster and at lower cost.

Other base defense variety : Aliens try to bomb your base without invading, giving your defenses more turns to fire. Aliens try to bomb a specific facility, giving your defenses the most time to fire. Aliens try to rush-kill all non-combat personnel in tactical combat (priority).

Edited by local
solider upgrade reward stuff
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I realise I have not replied to this thread recently enough and this will not do

Giving some of the aliens on these missions stun weapons is an interesting idea - it means if you are being a little more reckless with your squad due to the time limit then your guys just get stunned, rather than slaughtered, which is a little more forgiving.

I'm not really into giving the player better stun weapons as a reward - stun weapons are supposed to be crappy, and the player gets more than enough of them already. We do probably need to add an "advanced" stun baton for later in the game, but that not really much use in this case because these missions will happen earlier.

I'm also not very convinced by giving the player scientists or something like that - it feels a little hokey to me, and it doesn't seem like a fantastic reward when you can just hire any number of scientists pretty cheaply any time you like.

I think at the end of the day, the rewards will probably just end up being the national relations bonus from taking out the aliens, and if you take out all the aliens you recover their teleporter device which contains a bumper amount of alloys and alenium.

Edited by Aaron
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The problem with such a reward, though, is that it then feels in no way different from a typical UFO crash mission. That's where you get some alloys, alenium and a relations boost. While abduction missions as proposed sound like they would have different pacing, and that's great, it would also be cool to see the rewards somehow be different.

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One of the things xcom12 did right my my eyes were different rewards it made the game more interesting, sometimes in xcom12 you pick a reward over a country relations to you, knowing that you could/or would lost them, another time you choose the opposite it depended on what you needed at the time, it added another layer to the game

Yes I agree that engineers and scientists in this game isn't much of a reward but maybe a engineer/scientist (gives a small boost to research or manufacturing but not large enough to unbalance a game, the thing is maybe you need a little research to finish a research and the boost gets you that research) the best reward is what ever you need at the time, be it cash,alloys,soldiers even research to finish that project or even manufacturing to finish the item you need.

I like the idea that governments are offering something you would want and not just cash or alloys that you might have plenty of.

Maybe having 2 rewards from cash, alloys and vet soldier even engineers or scientists and let us pick 1 or 2 it would make a missions different, if they had different rewards for certain missions.

Edited by Queamin
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Giving some of the aliens on these missions stun weapons is an interesting idea - it means if you are being a little more reckless with your squad due to the time limit then your guys just get stunned, rather than slaughtered, which is a little more forgiving.

I'm not really into giving the player better stun weapons as a reward - stun weapons are supposed to be crappy, and the player gets more than enough of them already. We do probably need to add an "advanced" stun baton for later in the game, but that not really much use in this case because these missions will happen earlier.

I dunno about "more than enough". We have the baton, stun grenade, stun missile, and EMP grenade (that's a stunning grenade, right?). The stun gas is kinda useless and really weak, which knocks half of the above options out, pretty much. The baton is useful, but could be upgraded (like you said). The EMP grenade sounds cool, I've never used it so I can't talk of it's effectiveness.

Basically, we have a direct melee weapon (baton), an semi-direct super weak weapon (rocket), and two indirect weapons (at least one of which is weak). A close range direct weapon, like a shorter ranged pistol (think taser, maybe?), would fill a slot that isn't filled currently. It'd deal decent stun and EMP damage directly, and the baton 2.0 would deal really good stun and EMP damage directly. I think it'd work out well.

That's my view, anyway.

Even if you don't add the pistol, I really like the idea of the stun baton 2.0 dealing massive EMP damage. If you get that close up to an Andron, you better be able to take it out. ;)

It'd give batons an a nifty buff, which I think would be awesome.

Last thought: I wasn't even thinking of the advanced stun weapons being a reward for doing the mission, though I see that it would kinda be one. I was just thinking that if the aliens had a stun weapon, what could we learn from it and make of our own?

Besides, wouldn't it be nice for a player to research something and find out later how valuable it is? I'd appreciate that, at any rate.

If we're getting better stun weapons (like an advanced stun baton) then they have to come from somewhere, and if the aliens have stun weapons we'd have to research them. What would be the point of researching them if we can't even use that knowledge?

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I wouldn't know about adding more stun weapons to fill out more conventional niche, we just got out from the Stun doctrine where stunning things were 100% right choice over actual live ammunition. Any further and we might end up in bizarro parallel world where standard Earth weaponry is stun pistiol, stun sniper, stun machine gun, stun ICBM :P

(I'm pessimistic that close range direct weapon for stun would be far superior to conventional pistol unless given very short range, and if so why not use the baton?)

It might be interesting opportunity to diversify stun unlocks a bit if aliens do get a type of stun weapon for the mission. Instead of [stun Weapons] unlocking everything, we could have it that [stun weapons] only unlock the baton and have [Alien Stun Technology] unlock stun grenade/rockets.

Edited by ventuswings
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Aaron, I've already made an alien stun weapon as one of my essays into trying exotic things. If you're gonna do that then be warned, you have to set it to bullettype rocket or it will not work properly. With bullettype normal if you add stun damage, it will do the stun damage... and then deal 100pts of normal damage regardless of actual normal damage set. This will save you a frustrated hour of trying different damage types before realising where the problem actually is. This does turn it into the Xcom equivalent of a Small Launcher, but that isn't so bad, really.

Additionally, from a lore perspective, the easiest way I could see to make an alien stun weapon alien only is make it a psi-amp style piece of kit, which can only work with the totally alien 7th brainwave, and amplifies what is otherwise a rudimentary and deliberately stunted alien psychic ability.

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A little late to this party, but how's this for an Abduction mission reward system.

Throughout the map, there are two or three teleporters, each with several pods full of abductees attached. When the timer runs out, all of the teleporters engage and the mission ends. The question is how many of the teleporters you can disable before then. The more you stop, the greater your reward in both recovered materials and political support. For instance:

Destroy no teleporters: mission failed, the country lowers your funding, go drink pee.

Destroy one teleporter: recover X alienium and alloys, the country's funding level is unchanged.

Destroy two teleporters: recover 2X alienium and alloys, the country's funding level is slightly increased.

Destroy three teleporters: recover 3X alienium and alloys, the country's funding level is significantly increased.

This way, you don't HAVE to hurry through the mission and lose all your dudes, because stopping even one teleporter will at least prevent you from losing anything; the country is satisfied that you at least made a difference, even if they aren't thrilled. If you want to take more risks though, you can potentially get much greater rewards.

Not sure if destroying the pods rather than letting them be abducted should help or hurt you, though...

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Me like a lot

Not sure if destroying the pods rather than letting them be abducted should help or hurt you, though...

Each destroyed pod would result in the death of one civilian which would be part of the mission evaluation as standard - independently of the benefits described in the list.

How about making the amount of alenium and alloys dependent on how many of the teleportes the player has powered down? It comes logically from the above concept and would probably be easy to implement since each intact but powered off teleporter would represent 1 package of resources just like alien weapons do currently.

Going this way would be nice but the player should be "warned" about this mechanic in the briefing. Devs should also be careful placing such missions on the countries that are hit with the largest funding penalties to have the incentive for the player to outperform and destroy or capture the third teleporter. It even makes since lore wise since the aliens conduct such missions where they feel the safest thus on countries where they have conducted the most successful missions in the near past.

Edited by zolobolo
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I’ve been thinking about the abduction missions this morning and came up with an idea – could be good, could be bad – but putting it on paper (so to speak) may spark some thoughts.

To go back to the core issue: the early game in particular features too many similar missions that become tedious. The proposed solution of abduction missions would alleviate this, but having them timed encourages a very high-risk approach that could result in significant Xenonaut casualties that would be frustrating for the player.

So here’s the (admittedly radical) idea: a mission type where you control local forces. Hear me out… A military base in a friendly nation is being attacked by an alien force. There’s no time for the Xenonauts to send a squad – the attack is underway. The friendly nation’s government are requesting that the Xenonaut’s commander (that’s the player, of course!) takes command of the troops that are already on the ground via satellite link-up. In effect this would mean that the player is controlling a large number of rookie troops with basic equipment – think shotguns and pistols, maybe lasers a little later. These troops are essentially expendable, as they’re not Xenonauts and won’t have progression. That means a player is more likely to engage in high-risk tactics in order to repel the attack within a set number of turns. (Perhaps if the base hasn’t been successfully defended in x turns, it’s going to be bombed).

If this mission type is primarily for early-game then it can be gradually phased out and explained as human alien-detection methods improving to such an extent that alien sneak attacks are no longer possible.

Pros: adds more variety; no AI changes needed; only existing art assets required; should be relatively easy to implement; allows timed missions without the frustration; no potential for truly devastating game-ending Xenonaut losses; successful mission reward can simply be a relationship bonus from the relevant country.

Cons: no Xenonaut solider progression; controlling other forces is a significant departure from a core gameplay aspect. But then again, having expendable forces every now and then early game could help new players, and would reinforce the fact that Xenonauts are elite.

Just imagine a mission where you have 15 expendable soldiers with shotguns, defending a base from a horde of Reapers, and if you get completely slaughtered it won't result in a rage-quit...

Edited by Ogilvy the Astronomer
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Each destroyed pod would result in the death of one civilian which would be part of the mission evaluation as standard - independently of the benefits described in the list.

How about making the amount of alenium and alloys dependent on how many of the teleportes the player has powered down? It comes logically from the above concept and would probably be easy to implement since each intact but powered off teleporter would represent 1 package of resources just like alien weapons do currently.

Going this way would be nice but the player should be "warned" about this mechanic in the briefing. Devs should also be careful placing such missions on the countries that are hit with the largest funding penalties to have the incentive for the player to outperform and destroy or capture the third teleporter. It even makes since lore wise since the aliens conduct such missions where they feel the safest thus on countries where they have conducted the most successful missions in the near past.

Glad you like it. Some further thoughts/questions about implementation, though...

How would you shut down a teleporter as opposed to destroying it? Not saying I dislike the idea, just wondering how you would implement it gameplay-wise without making the mission type even more complicated?

The more I think about my idea, the more I wonder if there's actually a good and simple way of pulling it off. What happens if you disable a teleporter, but destroy some of the abductee pods attached to it? Do you get partial credit? Is killing an abductee who you know you can't save a good or bad idea?

Maybe it would be best if the teleporter and pods were combined into a single (large) map object?

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So here’s the (admittedly radical) idea: a mission type where you control local forces. Hear me out… A military base in a friendly nation is being attached by an alien force. There’s no time for the Xenonauts to send a squad – the attack is underway. The friendly nation’s government are requesting that the Xenonaut’s commander (that’s the player, of course!) takes command of the troops that are already on the ground via satellite link-up. In effect this would mean that the player is controlling a large number of rookie troops with basic equipment – think shotguns and pistols, maybe lasers a little later. These troops are essentially expendable, as they’re not Xenonauts and won’t have progression. That means a player is more likely to engage in high-risk tactics in order to repel the attack within a set number of turns. (Perhaps if the base hasn’t been successfully defended in x turns, it’s going to be bombed).

Interesting concept, but imo too big a disconnect from the rest of the game. The whole point of Xcom is grooming and improving your soldiers and equipment, and switching to a whole new cast of characters for one mission doesn't really jive with that.

Perhaps a better execution of this would be a timed "defend the base" mission. The xenonauts arrive and help the local forces defend the location for X number of turns until the aliens give up. It could differ from a terror mission in that the map is smaller (possibly indoors) and instead of running around hunting for the aliens you just have to wait for them to come to you.

May be too similar to normal base defense missions, though.

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So here’s the (admittedly radical) idea: a mission type where you control local forces.

This is why brainstorming works, there are just so many great ideas within the forums that a project manager can just cherry pick from. This sound also like a great idea with not too much additional effort required but a huge impact on variety and gameplay. The idea of having troops under your command (with russian, US or other uniform, yes please! :)) is a great way to loosen up and concentrate on the goal instead of keeping every singe man alive. Not only that, but players would get a nice feel for the world around them and not get the sensation that a single organization with 14 men is saving the world here. Such little touches make a game truly stand out from a crowd.

I have to admin I am still waiting for the game to loosen a bit up on the effects of casualties. In the original I was loosing men left and right but mostly didn't feel that this would mean the end (I also have to say I saw them as little more than cannon fodder at that time and never bothered giving names to them). In the current state I feel that loosing a valuable soldier means a huge setback, and loosing a rather veteran squad is game over.

Edit: Now that I think of it, I managed to get by with loosing a lot of veterans because of the large transport capacity of the drop-ship (it was around a dozen soldiers). It enabled the player to load up a lot of rookies compensating lack of experience and was working pretty well. This meant that with a little luck you could get by with a Soviet WW2 commanders human wave tactic most of the time :)

Edited by zolobolo
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How would you shut down a teleporter as opposed to destroying it? Not saying I dislike the idea, just wondering how you would implement it gameplay-wise without making the mission type even more complicated?

The more I think about my idea, the more I wonder if there's actually a good and simple way of pulling it off. What happens if you disable a teleporter, but destroy some of the abductee pods attached to it? Do you get partial credit? Is killing an abductee who you know you can't save a good or bad idea?

Maybe it would be best if the teleporter and pods were combined into a single (large) map object?

The teleporter devices could be automatically disabled if a players soldier would stand next to them during alien turn, or better yet: give the prop a parameter similar to that of a door (a switch with 2 stances corresponding 2 models). A "Disable" action would be shown when hovering over the item just like in case of doors and if you click on it, the prop image is changed so a flashing red light on it will turn green/not flash anymore or something similar. Either way the door would probably be a good prop to tart with since it already has two stances.

Destroying civilians either in pods or not should always have the same effect: -1 point in summary. The player is not encouraged to kill civilians in any circumstance - this is a clear rule that is easy to follow. A nation would probably not reward its police officers anyway if they would shoot the hostages instead of letting the robbers take them away :)

A single combined object would also work but having the teleporter and the pods separate enables much more map variety, and tactics. As I see it there is no need to differentiate pods from civilians on any map, they simply cannot run around. The Teleporter could be a separate object like a door. Having a large object is risky since it limits the map maker and damage modelling is difficult since it would look silly if a large object just disappears completely if a part of it takes hits - I get this feeling regularly when destroying base generators.

The idea seems solid, I cannot think of any issues with it currently. It fits into the DEVs requirement for diversity, is probably possible to implement with relatively few work, and is scaled in a way that it does not brake balance.

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if you click on it, the prop image is changed so a flashing red light on it will turn green/not flash anymore or something similar.
Lets make the colours yellow and blue just to make a point that it is alien and doesn't adhere to standardised colour language/scheme of human tech/machines! ^^
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Lets make the colours yellow and blue just to make a point that it is alien and doesn't adhere to standardised colour language/scheme of human tech/machines! ^^

Fair enough :) The player might have a better chance of understanding what is going on on the map and what the effects of his/her actions are if the colors are self explanatory - lets call it augmented reality - Or just do not have any flashy lights anymore on the device once it is disabled, that should also get the job done :)

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Fair enough :) The player might have a better chance of understanding what is going on on the map and what the effects of his/her actions are if the colors are self explanatory - lets call it augmented reality - Or just do not have any flashy lights anymore on the device once it is disabled, that should also get the job done :)

The reason I made the comment about the colourscheme was because I didn't think your pick was self explainatory. Why would it be green when it is disabled? and red when on standby/ready to go? I guess the colours would confirm that disabled (green) is good for the player but it's somewhat confusing imo, why would the aliens pick a scheme from the enemys point of view?

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The reason I made the comment about the colourscheme was because I didn't think your pick was self explainatory. Why would it be green when it is disabled? and red when on standby/ready to go? I guess the colours would confirm that disabled (green) is good for the player but it's somewhat confusing imo, why would the aliens pick a scheme from the enemys point of view?

More importantly, why would the aliens interpret red and green the same way we do? It's all cultural for us, there is nothing about the color green that carries any sort of message in and of itself. An alien species might understand those colors very differently from us, if they even use color to signify any kind of meaning. Perhaps an oval shape means "go" to them, while a square means "stop?"

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More importantly, why would the aliens interpret red and green the same way we do?

Agreed. An alien life form could in theory use any kind of method to communicate how a device is turned on or not as a matter of fact they would probably not have two legs, two arms a head...etc. for all we know killing us en mass with their plasma guns might be a way to say "hi, can we please borrow some of your cheese?" :confused: The point would be to enable the player interaction with the game in this case to "signal" him if the device is on or not, and since the player is the receiving end, his/her anatomy and cultural background needs to be applied for the selection of the signal .

True, even colors would have different meaning to humans from differing cultures, but how about using numerous lights all over the object when it is on, and turning all the light sources off when it is deactivated?

One could argue long for each color and their meaning but most humans and even hypothetical aliens would agree that a device is "on" when it is actively using energy to emit light and is probably deactivated if all these lights that normally - for whatever reason - are active suddenly turn off.

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More importantly, why would the aliens interpret red and green the same way we do? It's all cultural for us, there is nothing about the color green that carries any sort of message in and of itself. An alien species might understand those colors very differently from us, if they even use color to signify any kind of meaning. Perhaps an oval shape means "go" to them, while a square means "stop?"

Yes, that was the point I was making when I said to use yellow and blue... Why would they just happen to use the colours we are used to and associate with access/enabeling and denial/disabling (and then use them in reverse order)?

It's confusing design and if you're trying to say that the aliens don't interperate colours the same way we do you should go all the way and use completley different colours rather than switching them around.

I'm refering to this post incase you missed it:

Lets make the colours yellow and blue just to make a point that it is alien and doesn't adhere to standardised colour language/scheme of human tech/machines! ^^
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The colors are immaterial. While the machine is active, it should seem active (motion, blinking lights, flashing colors, etc). When you shut it down, it should stop showing signs of activity. The colors don't matter as long as the active sprites look more alive than the inert ones.

Anyway, the mission rewards of the Abduction objects are as follows, then:

Escaped Teleporter: no reward (if you let them all escape, you get a default country score of "terribad")

Destroyed Teleporter: X country bonus per pod attached.

Disabled Teleporter: X country bonus per pod attached, and Y alien alloys/alenium.

Destroyed Pod: -X country bonus.

Something like that?

Edited by Eyes of Argus
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