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XCOMUFO & Xenocide

New Scenario


Gimianax

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I've always enjoyed a good terror mission in UFO Defense. After crafting an Avenger in the game with good weapons in which I could shoot almost anything down, I remember still letting terror ships land just so I could have the challenge of a terror site mission.

 

I was playing 2000 today and thought, why not have one of the funnest missions as a scenario in UFO 2000?

 

I don't know how to program or anything, but one of you computer savvy gamers or one of the development guys should make a terror site mission.

 

I imagine it like this: the player that was challenged and has 2nd turn are the terrorists. The challenger is the squad sent to kill the terrorists. Of course, in order to make it a terror mission, there's got to be civilians.

Civilians should be randomly placed on the map. In order for the terrorist squad to win, they have to kill all the civilians or all the opponents squad. In order for the other squad to win, they have to prevent the enemy from killing all the civilians or of course their own squad from dying.

 

And while your at it, you guys should make psi weapons an option as well. Limiting psi weapons to only one or two guys wouldn't hurt too much would it? ;D

 

Let me know what you guys think!

 

Gimianax/erich

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it might be possible to implement units like weaponsets IE no aliens or all humans or Alien Vs Humans (the latter sounds fun!) in different scenarios. Civilians would be harder to add. To start with a simple civilian standin could be used that has a value attatched to it that would just count when one it destroyed but wouldnt really need to be used as anything but internal match standings
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Someting that might also a problem is the number of units. How many civilians are too much? Think a bout 15 Soldiers on both sides, and additionally 8 civilians on a 6x6-Map (summed up 38 units) is quite much, I think. But the idea of civilians itself is great.

 

There was another discussion about adding civies in order to prevent people from bombing the whole city. So that you my loose the battle, if you kill too much civies or something like that.

 

I don't know, how the civies-AI in UFO defense worked, but is it too complicated to add a "third party" of the round, that is acting randomly (of course the AI moved the civies randomly)? For example 50% that it moves the current facing direction, 20% that it turns the civie left and 20% right, 10 that it turns 180 °. It needs to be implemented, yes. But it may be nearly the same like adding a new scenario. Or am I wrong?

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  • 7 months later...
Someting that might also a problem is the number of units. How many civilians are too much? Think a bout 15 Soldiers on both sides, and additionally 8 civilians on a 6x6-Map (summed up 38 units) is quite much, I think. But the idea of civilians itself is great.

 

There was another discussion about adding civies in order to prevent people from bombing the whole city. So that you my loose the battle, if you kill too much civies or something like that.

 

I don't know, how the civies-AI in UFO defense worked, but is it too complicated to add a "third party" of the round, that is acting randomly (of course the AI moved the civies randomly)? For example 50% that it moves the current facing direction, 20% that it turns the civie left and 20% right, 10 that it turns 180 °. It needs to be implemented, yes. But it may be nearly the same like adding a new scenario. Or am I wrong?

 

It wouldn't actually take that much for civilians to be at least as convincingly intelligent as they where in the original X-COM, all you'd have to do is make them sit still and crouch. That's a hundred times smarter than wandering into the streets between two factions engaged in a fire fight.

 

Wether, it needs to be a new match type or just a map/game option like size, light level and number of points, should probably be left to the good folks actually implementing the thing. Though I suppose it's always possible to eventually have both.

 

As for the number of people on the map at once issue, just give them an option to choose how many civilians to have in their terror missions leaving the users to decide how many is too many.

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It wouldn't actually take that much for civilians to be at least as convincingly intelligent as they where in the original X-COM, all you'd have to do is make them sit still and crouch. That's a hundred times smarter than wandering into the streets between two factions engaged in a fire fight.

 

Wether, it needs to be a new match type or just a map/game option like size, light level and number of points, should probably be left to the good folks actually implementing the thing. Though I suppose it's always possible to eventually have both.

 

As for the number of people on the map at once issue, just give them an option to choose how many civilians to have in their terror missions leaving the users to decide how many is too many.

I didn't think that the civilians should be the brainiacs itself. :) But anyway, I agree with you, concearning the option-Point. For my self, I know, which players tend to blow the map. If I played against someone else then the bomber-men, it wouldn't be necessary to set civilians. But anyway it would make the situation more realistic in the city-maps. For example 0 to 10 civilians would be nice. Just an option, if I want it.

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Perhaps we are focusing on the wrong aspect of this idea. Rather than slave our minds to create civilians so that they can then be implemented into a scenerio, why not instead alter the objectives of the scenerio. We could have terrorist missions in which there are immobile targets for the aliens to destroy, for example generators, transmitters, and munitions. This would circumvent the AI problem while achieving a similar style of mission to the original terror missions.
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Nice idea. This might also be a great scenario. But the civilians were an idea to prevent players from blowing up half of the map, for killing the opponent units. This happens very often, because some players don't care if the game is tactical, or not. They just want to wipe out the opponent. I know, another solution were the stronger walls or the no-explosives-weaponset. But it must be possible to create a similiar mission like the original terror-mission.

 

But your solution would also be a challenge. The aim might be, to place one or more charges at special places/objects (like in Counter Strike), or alternative to kill all the enemy's units. Combined with the no-explosives-weaponsets it might be quite interesting, because you have just the charges for the objects to blow up. Not more.

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Well if you want a greater level of tactics without limiting the weapon set, perhaps we should make a "Bull in the China Shop" scenerio. In it you would need to destroy the enemy squad as normal, but you would lose if you hit/destroyed key pieces of terrain, such as warp gates, supplies, machines, computers, filing cabinets, and the like. Kind of an odd idea I know, but it would still get the job done of penalizing bombers.
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Nice idea. This might also be a great scenario. But the civilians were an idea to prevent players from blowing up half of the map, for killing the opponent units. This happens very often, because some players don't care if the game is tactical, or not. They just want to wipe out the opponent. I know, another solution were the stronger walls or the no-explosives-weaponset. But it must be possible to create a similiar mission like the original terror-mission.

 

But your solution would also be a challenge. The aim might be, to place one or more charges at special places/objects (like in Counter Strike), or alternative to kill all the enemy's units. Combined with the no-explosives-weaponsets it might be quite interesting, because you have just the charges for the objects to blow up. Not more.

 

Or one could play 6x6 maps with 10k points teams and ufo2000 weaponset - it's actually a tactical game then, and not shooting explosives blindly. :)

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I'll look into the possibilities and I'll give you some feedback.
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Or one could play 6x6 maps with 10k points teams and ufo2000 weaponset - it's actually a tactical game then, and not shooting explosives blindly. :)

 

I second this notion. 10,000 point games regardless of the weaponset don't become mass explosion warefare that a 15,000 point roster can afford you. I'm not saying it's not possible, there certainly are some rather destroyed buildings by the end of a long match. It's just when you have such a crowded battslescape that happens far

?more in 15,000 point games you see alot

more splash damage deaths as often the units are poorly armored (sectoids/snakemen) and in such abundance you can hit them nearly anywhere you feel like throwing out some explosives.

 

 

Of course civlian based scenarios would also be a lot of fun regardless.   Or protecting an area.

 

On a more radical scenario idea list, whats the possibility of having random 'items' being placed within the maps? I was thinking of scenarios like search and destroy/deathmatch if units were only able to equip with poor firearms/shivs or something at the beginning and all two-handed/heavy weaponry /explosives would actually have to be scavenged for within the map. Ma

ing it a bit of  a treasure hunt for better

weaponry.

 

quite a deviation from normal gameplay, but it's an idea to kick around.

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On a more radical scenario idea list, whats the possibility of having random 'items' being placed within the maps? I was thinking of scenarios like search and destroy/deathmatch if units were only able to equip with poor firearms/shivs or something at the beginning and all two-handed/heavy weaponry /explosives would actually have to be scavenged for within the map. Making it a bit of a treasure hunt for better

weaponry.

That would be real fun. Like in Quake. I'd look forward to such a scenario.

 

Some really good map-items like a "real" warp-gate, where you can switch the position immediately or something other "special" would be interesting.

 

Something also interesting iss the range of view-aspect (like in night-missions in "Enemy unknown"), that could be modified. At the moment you could set up the range of view before playing. But for example the light of the streetlights may give it some bonus, when the range of view is reduced. So generators which can shut down the light, when destroyed would give it an additional tactical point. Also the electro-flares would then be interesting again.

 

Something else I miss in this context, iss the fog of war, that many tactical games have. I mean that kind, which appears, when you have allready explored the position, but nobody is watching it at the moment. (Like in the map-view in the right upper corner, just for the battlescape.) Would be a better solution for settable brightnes than the night-missions of "Enemy unknown", but you would recognize it better, when some place is not watched any more, during reduced view. Also capable to run on/off, just if players prefer the current behaviour.

 

@Nachtwolf: I have some problems, to guess, who I can talk to, of your heart-crew, concearning special problems. I know Serge is the main programmer at the moment, but I don't know more. Is there any thread, where I can see who cares for which part (for example new graphics, new sound-effects, new weapon sets and so on...)?

 

Well if you want a greater level of tactics without limiting the weapon set, perhaps we should make a "Bull in the China Shop" scenerio. In it you would need to destroy the enemy squad as normal, but you would lose if you hit/destroyed key pieces of terrain, such as warp gates, supplies, machines, computers, filing cabinets, and the like. Kind of an odd idea I know, but it would still get the job done of penalizing bombers.

Something this way would also be OK. Just to have the bombers have some bad consequences when bombing blindly, just guessing someone would be hit.

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Is there a "No destructible scenery" option?

 

As for different game modes, I was thinking perhaps something like a zones thing - each tile contains an objective point, which is randomly assigned to a team. You win points for destroying the enemy's and lose points for having yours destroyed. The catch? you can't tell which team one belongs to until you are within close range of it.

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Another idea I just had:

 

Both teams have something like a goal, where the enemy has to bring some equipment-item. Both teams have the job, to carry their Item at the goal-place of the opponent. The way is not important. Thrown or carried, doesn't matter, how. The winner would not be the player which killed all enemy-units. It's the player how achieved to get his item into the opponent's goal firstly. The soldiers will respawn at the goal, or another special place, when killed.

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I really think that civilians would be the easiest to implement and for new players to understand.

 

When X-COM game us a terror mission we never had to ask, "Why is saving the civilians important?" They weren't worth too many points so long as you didn't kill them your self, but we were still compelled to rescue them, because that's what you do when you're playing a game about defending people from aliens.

 

--And what gamer hasn't seen a mission where the objective was to kill the bad guys without injuring civilians or letting them get killed? It's an entrenched concept that everybody understands intuitively.

 

I sort of see it as a variant on the Assassination scenario. Instead of finding and killing the enemy commander, player 1 has to find and kill all the civilians. Player 2 has to keep at least half the civilians alive (So he can't just protect one single civilian, but has to move through the city trying to save more, like in the original.) until the enemy is wiped out or the game runs out of turns. Like with assassination the number of turns and the size of the map will have a strong influence on who has the upper hand. This is okay, as it let's people set up matches where less experienced players have a chance. Letting players vary the number of civilians based on hardware capability and personal preference adds to that existing strength.

 

From a coding standpoint (which is admittedly no longer my specialty) it just seems like it'd be easier to create civilians, which can borrow a lot of code from the existing unit types, as opposed to generators and warp gates, which could have any number of unique properties that somebody has got to code. --Not that I don't think that street lights that actually light things and warp gates aren't cool ideas that would be awesome to have, but that they would be hard to implement and don't seem like they should be tied down to a single scenario type, so much.

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