Not Reproducable Weapons

[websee]

i found it made the game very easy that you could reproduce every weapon/alien artifact in the game (except elerium-115). i thougth the idea in ufo: aftermath much better where you were not able to reproduce the alien technology, but you could make less powerful human hybrids. that would limit you in some kinds of waepons that are really rare, but if you would want you could make less powerful human ones or wait until you find more of the desired weapon. the same for ammunition. then you caould also implement some very very heavy weapons (that cannot be reproduced) in the game of witch you find at mots 5 or 6 and ammo for them is also very rare and can only be fould on battleships/alien bases.

[Robo Dojo 58]

I believe this was discussed before.

 

The main problem with doing that is because the aliens only have 6 weapons to choose from. (PP, PR, HP, BB, StunL, gren) After a few missions, you'll usually have all the alien weapons, and enough to completely equip your troops. Having enough ammo/weapons won't be a big problem. Human hybrid weapons won't be that useful, because X-COM already will have all the full-power alien weapons that it needs.

 

Except for blaster launchers. Blaster launchers are only found at large and V.large UFOs IIRC, so limiting blaster weapons could be an option.

[ShadowHawk00]

Well like the previous poster said there is no need to reproduce the weapons. I have stores of them and they are my main source of income. I actualy do missions for the money.

Ufo-Am sucks in that way. U cant make some human ammo with all the engeneers but u can make alien weapons. Where is the logic in that.

[tzuchan]

Since this is for post v1.0, why not do this?

Aliens start the game with impressive weapons... Say railguns, plasma weapons or something like that.

 

Humans capture equipment, research 'em and happily reproduce them. Also, humans start using alien materials to make stuff like power suits. Humans now start taking names and kicking alien butts.

 

Aliens get upset... and start pulling out NEW weapons. Man portable grasers(Gamma ray lasers), Particle beam weapons. Also, aliens take a page out of Human's book and start equipping most of thier soldiers with power suits.

 

Humans grumble a bit at the suddenly higher losses when the aliens pull out the new techs, capture more equipment, and start researching...

BUT

Humans find that they can figure out how to use the weapons/equipment, but can't reverse engineer 'em this time...

OUCH!

Funny thing was, I was thinking about much the same thing before I logged on today...

[ATeX]

The idea about aliens evolving as well as humans is pretty attractive . But I won't make an advantage for one of the species. Maybe let them research for a very very long playing time and then let them end on the same point of evoluation (because u can't keep going on) :wink:

[mikker]

this was what they did with the blaster launcher. I mean, plasma pistols, plasma rifles, heavy plasmas. That was the standart. Then came new alien types together with the blaster launcher.

 

i also think that its the aliens who should start with the railgun. And the humans can't use it.

 

I would like to see aliens in power armor (a pic of a sectoid with one is already made.), and perhaps even FLYING armor.

 

I like the idea of new technology weaponry NOT build on elerium, but then what would it be build on? Why can't we reproduce/use it?

[tzuchan]

I like the idea of new technology weaponry NOT build on elerium, but then what would it be build on? Why can't we reproduce/use it?

 

Maybe not so neccesary for the new weapons to be based on new materials...

 

How about this:

Aliens start with weapons like railguns or plasma weapons that use elerium as a power source. Since we can replicate UFO power sources, that would still be possible.

 

But the new weapons would use elerium as ammo. There is a difference since elerium powering the weapon would mean that little to no refinement is done to the elerium. Elerium based ammo, however, requires special refinement that we can not duplicate.

 

As a result, we can built the weapons, but it's useless since we can only capture ammo from the aliens

[websee]

when i wrote this thread i thougth of a system like it was made in ufo:aftermath. first the aliens came with laser weapons. you could not reproduce them, but you coúld make less powerful human hybrids. then they came with plasma weapons, and same you could use them, but could not reproduce them and could make human hybrids. then the same with the warp tech. i hink in xenocide there should be more weapons then just plasma and blasterbomb.

 

the same with arnour. in aftermath they got first sun then sky and at least bio armour. as soon as you capture it you could make human hybrids out of it.

[Cpl. Facehugger]

I like the idea of the aliens evolving their weaponry like they evolve their troops. (Sectoid-Muton)

 

I do not, however, like the idea of alien tech that we can't reproduce. It seems to go against my pride in the human race, our inbuild ingenuity to take damn near anything and put it to our use.

[websee]

i did not say x-com cant use them. they can, but they just can't reproduce them and their ammo, so when you run out of ammo, you have to switch to the less powerful human hybrids until you find new ammo. in aftermath as soon i had enougth laser rifles to equip all troops with them, the aliens came up with plasma, later same with warp.

[Cpl. Facehugger]

I realize that. But I still think that anything the aliens can make, we can make better.

[Puasonen]

Maybe we could do it like in apoc. We can reproduce everything but some weapons just aren't effective against aliens so it's useless!

[Atlas10101]

Maybe we could do it like in apoc. We can reproduce everything but some weapons just aren't effective against aliens so it's useless! 

sounds like a good Idea but back to the comments that I read in meny other posts these are IDea more designed for version 1.1 or greater, I think the main aim of v1.0 should be getting the orginal down as close as possible with no frill added until a bit later...not saying anyone of these Ideas is bad in anyway in fact I like them...but the programers have enough on their minds...one step at a time guys...simple as that

[Puasonen]

sounds like a good Idea but back to the comments that I read in meny other posts these are IDea more designed for version 1.1 or greater, I think the main aim of v1.0 should be getting the orginal down as close as possible with no frill added until a bit later...not saying anyone of these Ideas is bad in anyway in fact I like them...but the programers have enough on their minds...one step at a time guys...simple as that

That's why we are talking about it in the lab.

This is how these forums work.

 

Laboratory -> conversation about V1.0+

Workshop -> conversation about V1.0

 

So this is the right place to talk about these, don't worry

[Atlas10101]

all too bothersome,

elerium-115 was the main one in the orignal and I think that it was an amazing limiter, reading the stratagy guide from the first one most of what it talked about regarding alien equipment was conserving elerium-115 though in the game, depending how you played, this conservation wasn't as practical, ex: flying suits.

so adding other facors in there is a good Idea but my suggestion is limit manufacuring parts for technology not weapon that all the aliens carry anyway, maybe have the aliens destroy their powersource when they think its going to be capured?

[websee]

i know that elerium-115 was somehow limited in x-com defense, but you could raid theese supply ships very easily and then gave 150 elerium each. you even didn't have to shoot them down, so you could start theese raids very early in the game. so this wasn't really limiting.

[Atlas10101]

I tend to agree...possibly make anouther equally important thing harder to get? or make a whole bunch of things equally as hard (as elierium) to get but impossible to manufactureto make it a process to make your super-avenger-fleet.

[Puasonen]

I believe we are planning to make supply ships harder..

[Robo Dojo 58]

Supply ships land next to bases. They should recieve support from them. It also might be a bit difficult to cart the UFO (and Elerium) away when there's a hundred aliens coming out of their base lift... the UFO may need to be left there.

[Cpl. Facehugger]

As long as I get my elerium, I'm happy!

In addition to that, we can design the interior of the supply ship to be heck for attacking human forces. (Chokepoints galore!)

[Atlas10101]

escorted supply ships maybe?

""sweet we have a supply ship on radar....wait a minute ahh crap it have 87 very smalls with it too...son of a #$%^&?

[Cpl. Facehugger]

Yup, that is another suggestion...

[Puasonen]

But that's definitely V1+ and we are talking about how to make it harder to attack them in V1.

[Cpl. Facehugger]

Once someone does up a concept of the ss exterior, I can do up the interior with a crappy drawing.

[centurion]

to weapons manufacturing (human pride, etc): it is pretty absurd, that a 100 or so scientists can understand a weapon entirely alien in origin so well that we can build perfect replicas within, say, a month or so; if you had a guided missile in the '40s, it wouldn't matter how many bright people worked on it, they would not be able to make an integrated circuit.

 

to the supply ship problem: maybe if we had a base attack (sort-of) mission initiated when we try to capture a ship at the base, that would harden it; btw, human bases have defenses, aliens are not good enough at doing the same? escorts would also be great, but a bit tough to integrate this into the 1 on 1 craft combat from the original.

[Puasonen]

to weapons manufacturing (human pride, etc): it is pretty absurd, that a 100 or so scientists can understand a weapon entirely alien in origin so well that we can build perfect replicas within, say, a month or so; if you had a guided missile in the '40s, it wouldn't matter how many bright people worked on it, they would not be able to make an integrated circuit.

You are right, but there are things that has to be something else than realistic to make this game playable.

 

Like:

 

Accuracy -> C'moon, if x-com has the best of the best soldiers and they miss aimed shots from 10meters away from alien, that's not very realistic now is it.

 

Grenades -> They are way more effective in real life, not to mention it's impossible to throw as accurate as x-com soldiers do in x-com 1 and 2.

 

Tanks -> Tanks can't drive over trees, through walls, over aliens. Nothing! This probably would make tanks too good though so this way it's balanced.

 

There are things that can't be realistic, otherwise the gamplay would suffer. The research/manufacture is one of those things.

[tzuchan]

Nyyperoid:

 

And as such, there's nothing preventing us from playing around with what is manufacturable and what is not to tweak game balance as well as make it more fun/challenging.

[LaserTag]

about the non reproducable weapon, how about we have weapon non-usable by human? Maybe a super heavy gun only usable by a Muton? Alien bio is different from human, but we could add something in there.

[Puasonen]

about the non reproducable weapon, how about we have weapon non-usable by human? Maybe a super heavy gun only usable by a Muton? Alien bio is different from human, but we could add something in there.

Or maybe some own versions? Like this mutons super heavy gun, humans could change it a little bit and convert it to tanks cannon! I would like to see humans changing the alien tech to more usable for humans. That way manufacturing costs would become more interesting too.

 

This way we couldn't use every alien weapon before revising it a bit in the workshops first.

 

For example:

For Human version of Heavy plasma, you need a Heavy Plasma, 5 alien alloys and some money of course.

[Historian]

How about penalties for using alien tech?

Human soldiers don't aren't used to alien technology so it is very likely that they won't know exactly how it works.

You could make alien weapons have very low accuracy but you should be able to replicate them as hybrids.

This way you could either use the alien weapons as you find them, or you could take the time to manufacture your own plasma weapons that work better for you.

[Puasonen]

Thats even better idea than what I came up! It makes perfect sense. Comfortable use for aliens doesn't mean it's comfortable to humans. Humans should revise them to be better in human hands.

[LaserTag]

Scienist: this is the plasma weapon that your capture from the alien?

Capain: yeah

Scienist: and what are you giving it to me for?

Captain: we can't use this thing!!

scienist: why not?

captain: for one thing, it's 300 pounds, not to mention the trigger is designed for a alien that has his hand at the GROIN

[Historian]

::

That was funny LaserTag. It could easily become a CTD flavor text.

[Puasonen]

Hilarious! ::

That's my point exactly!

[LaserTag]

thank you, I'm here all day

[[stewart]]

Corrected "typo" in topic title.

[LaserTag]

Rookie: Sir, what do you want me to do again?

captain: I need you to test fire a new weapon we got from the aliens

Rookie: that's fine sir, but why are you and sarge wearing a power suit and is standing behind a alloy reniforced window?

Captain: better safe than sorry ( turn to sarge) are you sure?

Sarge: if I remember correctly, the alien was holding the gun side way when he was shooting at me....... althought it look the same which ever way you look at it.

Captain: and if you're wrong?

Sarge: that's why we're wearing powersuit and is behind a alloy reniforced window :happybanana:

Sarge & cap: SON OF A BITCH!!!!!

[Formerly MQ]

I agree with all people who said that the weapons captured should take a SUPER LONG donkey TIME to be researched....maybe with some cool plot twists like a pop up window when you are about 70% done researching your first captured alien weapon stating something along these lines:

 

"The weapon you have recovered has been found to be too damaged to complete a full analysis. We require another specimen to continue our studies."

 

"We have discovered that the weapon's power supply has been ireparably damaged during combat and we cannot continue research until an additional specimen has been acquired"

 

"Whilst researching the power structure of the device, a dreadful accident has occured and we have lost 4 scientists and it will take 4 days to repair the lab"

 

Good news. While we were studying the device at hand, it has become apparent to us that we can open up a new branch of science in this area possibly yielding fantastic results - do you wish us to allocate the funding to proceed?" (in this one it could be like a 50-50 shot, like if you do there is a chance it might just be nothing discovered, or it could be some killer new graviton armor or you know, something specific to that game. Every time you play, it would be randomly different! that would be really cool...im thinking along the lines of gamble/risk factor, high risk hi payoff stuff)

 

 

 

Small easy things like this would give the game a deeper feel, and more of a role playing feel as a commander really calling the shots - not only in research either, but in other cool stuff as well.

[Formerly MQ]

Another thing is, if our fighters today encountered a UFO, it would do CIRCLES around our fighters and pee on them...they would RAPE US!!!! The game should be the same until we can get lucky and rely on our research advances. THIS SHOULD TAKE A LOOOONG TIME AND LOTS OF MONEY TO RECTIFY. This should be the way it is for the beginning - our fighters are pittle against ufo's. Maybe advances could also occur in not only sending fighters, but maybe a popup saying "would you like our advanced and improved SAM sites in teh area to try to down the craft?" - who needs to draw that out in a sequence? just have it as a choice, and maybe another pop up saying it was successful with a picture of a downed ship, or an escaping ship, or a burning sam site, or maybe even a little motion movie thing...that would add some fun and realistic attributes to it. Edited February 19, 2004 by Formerly MQ

[centurion]

I think random events have already been dismissed for the purposes of V1, but I would definitely like to see those you mentioned in V1+.