7 replies to this topic

[Jonnyboy182]

I am new to the site, so I dont know if anyone has used this yet (I read most of the posts, just not all)
I think it would be awesome to have every soldier have background stories, before you recruit you can read about each guy, just a paragraph or so. To incorperate it with game play wouldnt be to hard. (unless we are totally randomizing charaters) Heres an example of what I mean

Cpt. Rivera (enter name here)

Captain Rivera comes to us from the US Army Rangers. When the first alien craft was shot down by NORAD his unit was dispatched to secure the crash site. Unfortunatly they went into the overwhelming odds and 10 of the 12 members were killed. Captain Rivera Himself was badly wounded and wouldnt have survived if not for a Private who carried him out. The last 5 years he has spent in a hospital and enduring extreme physical therapy to regain motor functions. We are warned by Command that he has shown signs of "Post dramatic stress" and may have a tendincy to break under the pressure. However, the psyc department gives him the green light for activation.

This is just an example, it may be tedious to make up a paragrah for 200 or so characters (or however many are put into the pool) How I feel this can help gameplay is help commanders choose the best people for the mission. For example, Captain Rivera may break down when under fire. (Low courage) Imagine someone else whos family had been killed by the aliens going beserk and killing and stuned aliens ::

[Puasonen]

It would be a great idea BUT:
Soldiers are going to be very vulnerable like in "x-com enemy unknown AKA ufo defense". Most of the times you get hit by plasma weapon, you will die instantly. That combined with the fact that the game will be playable without being forced to reload is 100+ killed soldiers in a game. Means we would have to make up thousands of backround storys to keep it interesting. It would be cool but who has the time

[Jonnyboy182]

Hmmmm, not sure how I feel about them dying ever mission, I kinda liked it in Apoc that you could actually BUILD a team without them getting killed every time a popper or bomb went off near you. Oh well, I def. dont wanna write out 2000 paragraphs, would be kind of hard to be original after the first 500 or so
Thats cool tho

[Breunor]

You could take that time to create a large pool of entries, but if they reflected a soldier's stats in any way, there would be additional coding needed to match certain text lines to stats, and you'd need quite a few text entries for that. It's a nice idea for after version 1, where you might pick from a pool of available people though. I'll move this to the labs.

[Tuoppi]

I don´t think a written history should exist. I wouldn't read them after 5 first ones. Maybe a brief notification from random generator that makes up troops where the soldier has served and was transferred from. And nationality or something. But not any written stories please.

[Robo Dojo 58]

As the commander of forum members in X-COM, I wouldn't really care about the life of my soldiers. I want to know if they can be trusted, and if they can fight. I'd also like to know where they were born, and maybe where their family lives, so I can notify them of their loved one's inevitable demise.

Here's Jon Joe's basic profile:

Military ID#: 01379483
Name: Jon Joe
Callsign: Dojo's Lackey
Rank: Rookie
Training:(Should it be implemented...) making coffee.
Last Assignment(s): Chyenne Mountain, NV, US; Edwards Airforce base, CA, US; Palestine, Israel.

DOB: 3/8/76
POB: Atlanta, Georgia, US
Race: White
Blood Type: O+
Height: 167cm
Weight: 135kg
Living Relatives: none

All this stuff can be randomly generated, but "Last Assignment(s)" would need a big pool of things to choose from.

[Puasonen]

Good idea Robo, place of birth can't be randomly generated though. It has to be related to the name somehow depending on which is generated first, the backround info or the name. Then the other should be generated to match the other.

[Julian]

Well, I played a lot of pnp rpg and I came across some very good random event generators. The main issue would be to translate the infos into text-based descriptions (think multi-language after). However, it can bring a lot of interesting twists: what if you had a soldier that proves to have natural psy capabilities? A natural fit? Thinks like that.

On a side note, given we can emprison aliens, I'd like to know what would you think of defectors? Imagine an alien you convince to get by your side. Would make for nice mixed species teams, don't you think? This could be an option when interrogating an alien and a simple test to see if he resists or not.

EDIT: and imagine the confusion on the alien's side... like, in battles, they could think the defector is with them and not shoot at him.

Edited by Julian, 22 June 2004 - 06:18 AM.