
Live Aliens And Research
#1
Posted 26 March 2004 - 04:36 PM
Currently there is little reason for keeping live aliens after you have researched them, in fact after you have the live type you dont need more live aliens except for rank.
It seems slighlty silly that you would turn down the oppurtunity to comprehensively study an alien organsim especially when it is trying to attck your world.
So i thought of some modifications to the alien research methods found in xcom.
Alien autopsies would be the same and require simply [alien containment] and a [laboratory] as before hand.
The [alien containment] would also have facilities for keeping live aliens, these would be little more than cells or holding tubes with enviroments. Whilst this would provide some research potential it would prvide little data about behavouir, advanced studies of locomotion or anything that required space.
So these limited facilites would provide only limited research on live aliens, biochemical data and more advanced autopsy style information.
Then there would be new facility, the secure alien habitat, using previuos information and perhaps communication this facilty provides much more space and a more natural enviroment for the study and observation of aliens, the more intelligent ones could even be interorgated in such a facility.
This would provide much more information, especially behavoural and real life applications of knowledge rather than acedemic extraporlations, for example the discovery of [chrysallid] tracking mechanism so that crawling means the chrysallid cannot detect you and so cannot attack (could this be in game? Seems like a cool idea)
Perhaps later there can be a upgrade, with alien entertainment research and mindprobes it would be possible to trick aliens into thinking they were in a different situatin and use the mind probe to sense their actions allowing for advanced behavourial studies, such research would take a while but could provide an insight into the working of the alien AI thorugh the use of research in game reinforcing player observations.
And all this means live aliens have a continuing purpose. The possobilites for extra atmosphere and fluff research is extensive and the possobilities for more advanced bio technologies and alien understanding is also there for new techs later.
#2
Posted 26 March 2004 - 04:44 PM

*Coming back? Avast! Facehugger, finish your assignments!*

#3
Posted 26 March 2004 - 06:05 PM
ou would need several aliens as some might die and it would take a while to find such stuff out, hence an observation and research style habitat as opposed to a place to hold them.
#4
Posted 27 March 2004 - 09:29 AM

#5
Posted 27 March 2004 - 05:17 PM
...Cloaks are most vulnorable in the brainz?Well... an autopsy might reveal that the alien has more nerves (or whatever) connected to it's arms than anywhere else. Or perhaps it could have vital organs in it's arms? And then the scientists could just make a wild guess that the creatures arms are the most vulnerable spot.
"and nothing else matters" ~ Nickleback
the truth about scientologySome people say that dreams are a portal to the subconscious. If that is so, I am a very disturbed person.
#6
Posted 28 March 2004 - 09:23 AM
Some of the aliens (or all) could be suicidal, there could be a sort of implant in them or simply their "will" (wich they don't really have, for the main brain on Cydonia controls them). So, let's say they simply die after a period of time, a week or something.
I personally like the idea of "controlled alien habitat" and doing a research on them, but the problems is what to do with too much aliens?
#7
Posted 28 March 2004 - 10:18 AM

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#8
Posted 30 May 2004 - 07:56 PM
Aliens should starve after a few days if the player hasn’t discovered their food.
The extras aliens could be fed to the live ones to demoralise them or even just as a quick way to get rid of the bodies, after all they have no problem with dissolving human bodies and eating the goo.
Maybe as more ‘fluff research’ is conducted the player can gain useful knowledge that is not necessarily needed to finish the game. After say, 3 fluff branches on the tech tree, you could discover something REALLY useful, like I way to trigger an inbuilt ‘self destruct’ with psi powers or a way to use viral agents to cull them at their bases.
Even better is the other idea that maybe humans can not replicate plasma technology and that we can only salvage it of the bodies of the aliens. So what if, after several ‘fluff technologies’ you discover a way to make human weapons more like the alien technology.
All after V1.0
Does this make sense to anyone but me?
BTW
This is a totaly kewl idea!!!!!I personally like the idea of "controlled alien habitat" and doing a research on them
#9
Posted 30 May 2004 - 08:12 PM

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#10
Posted 30 May 2004 - 10:30 PM

#11
Posted 31 May 2004 - 05:31 AM
*go on then, have a go, see if you can hit that sect.......GOOD JOB soldier*
This would be a good idea for mods and suchlike, but could prove very time consuming and hard to balance. Would it be easter egg like, or essential? Maybe more required the harder the level, so on beginner you would not need anything, but by the SH level you would be desperate.
another thought, maybe you need X live Y race? eg for advanced biochemical analysis of sectoids, you would need to obtain 5 live sectoids of any rank, and for advanced tactical analysis you would need 5 sectoid navigators. That sort of thing. This info would be available to the player, so an additional column would be needed - special materials. As the aliens would be dying quickly, you are able to start a project with less than the number of required aliens, but any project requiring solely dead aliens would need ALL the bodies before starting, just to make things more interesting.
How about that then?

#12
Posted 31 May 2004 - 07:13 AM
the truth about scientologySome people say that dreams are a portal to the subconscious. If that is so, I am a very disturbed person.
#13
Posted 23 January 2007 - 01:54 PM
#14
Posted 27 February 2007 - 02:13 PM
Possibly sending an Alien on a suicide run thru your base to find your Containment lab and break out the other Aliens
this would meen your half way through researching commander 2 only find him dead at the end of base defence.
i dont like it.

#15
Posted 27 February 2007 - 04:51 PM
Possibly sending an Alien on a suicide run thru your base to find your Containment lab and break out the other Aliens
this would meen your half way through researching commander 2 only find him dead at the end of base defence.
i dont like it.
More incentive not to let the /b/tards through then isn't it?
Also, I like the idea that some aliens, without their psionic bosses controlling them, would revert to a feral state. Just a thought.
#16
Posted 10 April 2007 - 12:02 PM
Also, the aliens are clones right, so all the ones of a particular class are programmed with the same knowledge. Interrogating 10 of them wouldn't give you any more than one.