Jump to content
XCOMUFO & Xenocide

Recommended Posts

One thing I always wondered whilst playing UFO Enemy Unknown was "Where am I during all this?" Now, its easy to say that you are operating from some desk in a remote secret location somewhere but I would imagine the X-com "Chief" would be at the primary base far removed from possible intervention and safe under a few hundred feet of granite, God knows I would if I had the choice.

 

I got thinking about this and came up with several ideas that tied in with it.

 

As an in-game option (or not as you please) you could include the base commander. an Option shoudl exist to name the commander for that personal touch (c'mon it is supposed to be you!)

 

At your primary base there should be a facility called command headquarters or something similar, which is basically the nerve centre for X-com and additioanlly provides living quarters for the X-com commander and several admin personel.

 

In a base raid, the commander would be represented by a soldier who must be guarded at all costs, because its you, and if you die game over. of course X-com would go on without you, but you wouldn't be around to see it. It could even be a case of "without your vision and sterling leadership, the X-com project was quickly scrapped -World Explodes..."

 

The command centre could be like the one in an alien base, tricky to get into, perhaps with automated defences, (think 1-square immobile HWP's of the best sort you have researched and not obviously the explosive types)

 

The possibility to move the command centre to another base should exist, and perhaps even modifiying stats pre-game so you could choose your kind of persona whether its a crack marksman, or a psychically strong fearless leader, who can't shoot for toffee. That offers up room for more expansion, as to what kind of leader the base commander is. for example a skilled Politician could wangle extra funding and reduce tensions with governements whilst a respected scientist could get cheaper scientists and faster research gains, a high ranking military officer would have troops training faster and reduced equipment prices.

 

Another possibility is to allow for the commader to go on skyranger missions, offering a huge morale boost, but at considerable risk. Its a little unfeasable perhaps -but hey, Kirk and Picard had more combat experience than their whole security divisions put together!

 

Let me know what you think

Edited by Zakastra
Link to comment
Share on other sites

naw, dont like the idé. the commander would't need to run x-com from the base, in fact that not a very safe place to be conidering aliens.

and the moral boost, that would mean that the soldiers know who the commander is, i want x-com to be need-to-know.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It is safer than anywhere else considering the number of infiltrators running around. Besides, this way all communication is local and lot less compromised.

 

I do agree with the second-point. Although I figure that means the governments no nothing substantive about hte project and base their funding on results they can see rather than the ones you see(alien activity is less of a problem for them).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

with alien atacks, x-com bases arnt the safest place to be. put him on a secret location. without putting a fortress around it. and the aliens will never know where to look.

the commander shouldt be placed anywhere x-com planes take of, or land. becouse the aliens would track them.

Edited by Qonfused
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think it might be an interesting Alamo-ish thing to have when everything else looks bleak as all heck. i.e. Just about all your bases are crap, they can't pull their weight as well, then boom - You get one last option to regain some prestige by using your commander character + 11 more soldiers with 1 Skyranger to make things right again.

 

Question is, how far must things become so bleak that option opens up to you and for what possibilities would having that element be?

 

I would suggest that if it got that bad, then the game should allow you then to begin to actually "take" alien bases for your own. At least for awhile :) The aliens wouldn't like that much hehe.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

They don't move the president to a nuclear bunker in times of calamity because the crisis will know exactly where to look for him in his impregnable secret fortress, they take him to the bunker because its SAFE. Just like a newbie player at its inception the X-com organisation probably isn't expecting an alien battleship to drop a bag full of ethereals into its "top secret facility" the first time I got caught with an alien retalliation I nearly wet myself with shock, it was not something I had anticipated... doubly upsetting was the fact that the 'ranger was off to australia leaving two soldiers (one wounded) to guard the home front...

 

If the X-com commander is "somewhere" think of the communication diffuclties, you wouldn't want to use telephones, even a satelite link to the base. because for all you know the aliens are listening every minute. You just gotta be there in person.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well that does explain the promotion system certainly. One falls, another takes its place.

 

I don't know, I'm sort of divided on this aspect. I mean I like the thought of having some character driven element in there, but not necessarily at the expense of everything else going on in the game.

 

In other thread we were discussing making civs have some specialized uses (tagging along on soldier missions to name one). If this element was implimented, I should think we wouldn't have to do anything special with a commander character to boot even though it does seem attractive from a special op point of view.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Just to address what Qonfused and others said before, I know that the nature of how the commander were to operate, he wouldn't go directly into harms way unless circumstances dictated it. His sanctuaries, wherever they are or how ever they are described and his movements are unimportant up until one of those circumstances arrived.

 

My overall point though in favor of it is that it would have to be of a special case, or mission objective driven thing for it to have any applied meaning here. My other point in relation to this concept goes back to the multiple commander thing as was touched on. The if-one-falls-another-takes-his-place thing. To lose one would be a blow, but the promotion system would give the job to the next best candiate (or more if there can be more than one at the same time) so it wouldn't sting for very long nor set you back very far.

 

My only argument against it is that, until I saw the game working, I wouldn't know until then whether it would still be a fun idea based on what ever other stuff there is to manage or look out for (overall logistics stuff), or if the application shouldn't be more of a spoon fed scenario type (whereas much of the game is probably not like this).

Edited by Snakeman
Link to comment
Share on other sites

for gamplay reasons; this isnt fallout tatctics(not that there's anything worng with that), bringing in elements like "the commander" brings us far away from the original game,

From a stratagi game, to some kind of twinking character game, where your character is more important than the big picture, i want everything, every soldier, every plane, every base; to be expendible.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Please sign in to comment

You will be able to leave a comment after signing in



Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...