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XCOMUFO & Xenocide

X-com Stands Alone?


Sdragon

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I think its ludacris that when the when the world is under threat from aliens that the worlds communities will throw some money in a bag and let a small group defend the earth single handedly. I think it makes sence that each country will take measures to defend its own people. Looking at the game from this purspective the conflict can look a whole lot wider.

Think about it, is there only 1 terrorist attack a month? Could be more but the countries own spetial forcers come in and deal with it and X-COM are only called in if things get really bad. I don't see a country sitting and waiting for a day while civilians are getting masacred in the hope that X-COM will drop by and say hello. Elite forces such as the Rangers, SAS and Spetznatz for example could have a place in it right? Would be good ariving at a plea for help and finding a knocked out APC and a few surviving soldiers in a feirce fire fight.

Would make things a whole lot interesting. Who buys all the junk that you decide to sell? Would be cool to sell a bunch of laser rifles and then a week later going to assist in the deffence of a Rangers base and one of the guys is using one of your guns you sold.
X-com: Hey! You've got Sara! She got me through the days when I was fighting Snake men!
Ranger: You guys have plasma cannons!?!?

Aliens taking over governments will have a much larger impact. Just imagine the aliens signing a pact with the UK then a few days latter the SAS attack your base under alien influance and Euro fighters start chasing after your sky rangers.

Also read some stuff about playing from the aliens point of view and lots of worries how it could be ballanced? No problem, the player will have to deal with other elite deffence forces , or mabey regular soldiers at first and the elite guys come later (like what the aliens do). X-com can be a rare thing to fight at first. Later when the player fights them he'll go.
"Oh s**t! its X-COM!" As he sits up in his seat and starts concentating cause he knows there are 14 loonies with heavy lasers hunting for him.

Could help out in other ways as well, say that France shoots down a UFO and requests that X-com come in and do the ground stuff. This can happen more oftern if the player carelessley gets all his intercepters shot down and can't chace UFOs. This gives the player a feel that he's not fighting alone and the international community is helping out.
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Who's to say the first part doesn't alreday happen? I always assumed that a terror attack that xcom got called to was too serious for anyone else to handle and that's why they're only a handful throughout the game.

Same goes for selling weapons, if xcom could sell them at a price governments wanted to buy at they have a constant stream of buyers :P

However the last bit sounds like good fun as the player would be in a dilemma. Do we kill country x's troops and further hurt the diplomatic process or do we take prisoners and so on. I also like the idea of countries shooting down ufo's but that'd have to be kept really low key and only if the player was really bad. Sort of a last chance before endgame. To stop the player relying on that as a tactic you could add in that any 'country' shot down ufos don't carry any score modifiers so the player would basicallly just be going in for tech.

Good ideas but I guess as it'd require playtesting it'd have to be a +v1.0
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Could give the other countries very poor radar. Would result in them not even noticing many of the UFOs (X-com is ment to have all the best stuff after all). The detection percentage can change depending of player performance.

selling weapons point I was making is that they don't just disapear into thin air, they end up fighting the aliens in the hands of none X-com personel (of fighting X-com if the country gets infiltrated) would also be nice for the player to lock down certain counties that he suspects could become hostile. Edited by Sdragon
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Now that I think more into the selling system some things would have to be implimented. So to stop the player from selling everything to a country that he's based in and nowhere else to avoid it from being used against him. I was thinking of having a demand, depending on what the country has it'll want certain weaponry and not thousands of laser rifles when only spetial forces would be using them.

Then I thought that eventualy if all the countries were happy with what they had you couldn't sell them. Thought of a trash option but junking such high qulity equipment is silly. Another option of selling to "other" people could be used, buyers offer way less in the area of buying price. But it gives the player money and offers him a way of getting rid of obsolite equipment that the other countries don't even want.

Just some basic ideas, I can't help but theorise.
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Yeah, live soldiers would rule. Imagine this situation:

It is a night terror site, army troops have responded, but 80% were annhilated, the rest are holed up in a building hoping the bugs won't get them. Then, they hear a Plasma shot and alien screams, They take a peek out of the building to see xcom troops in power armor slaughtering the aliens. :)
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  • 2 weeks later...
Awsome idea!!!!!!

You could also have it so that if you sell LOTS of something... say Laser cannons... the price they will pay will get lower and lower (perhaps per 100 units sold? ) so you dont just pimp out one product forever and ever.

The country thing is great to. You could really make missions mean something other then DESTROY GET STUFF BLAHBLAHBLAH. Perhaps situations like stated, SAS special forces went to take on a terror site and got massively screwed over... and now your sent in to save their asses (and perhaps a high ranking officer).

And about the country asking to do missions they started (Pre-shotdown UFOs) could be a DIPLOMATIC thing as well. The country is happy to see you come at a moment notice... and it would better their relationship with you.

More on selling, how about countries could infact REQUEST a certian object once a month to be sold to them... a piece of technology or a certian alien.

OMG I JUST HAD AN AWSOME IDEA!!! I always thought that it was stupid that the whole world relied on ME to research technology, but how about this... a country asks for a certian piece of alien tech (alien alloy for example) and about a month later they CREATE something you couldn't research by yourself. No it is not free research... it's an object you would have never gotten by yourself.

Perhaps the US requests 10 Blasterlaunchers one month... you scrounge them up (or manufacture much to your disapointment) and then 1-2 months later they come back with a IMPROVED rocket for the rocket launcher. The research must be related... so you send them 50 alien grenades and they come back with fusion grenades... only THEY can maufacture them... so you have to buy the stuff from the country itself. That way your buy menu doesn't become obsolete other then to buy soldiers/scientists/engineers.
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Yay a reply so fast!

Yes Xcom is supposed to have the best of everything... However you already had the grenade and researched it... so you had the best grenade at the time... now government X is looking to improve upon it to make YOU more effective in killing... for a price ;)
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I see, but they probably wouldn't give it to you "for a price" they would probably give it to you right away, for free. Hmm, this could depend on how well you have been protecting that country... Hmm... There is a lot we could do with this concept... :)
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You'll see this is posted in the laboratory, which means it most likely will not be in V1 of Xenocide. All ideas discussed here are for use (maybe) in a future version, but the primary goal for v1 is an xcom clone, basically :)
Since it will be highly moddable, these ideas could be implemented later on. Edited by j'ordos
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The first sentences of the ufo:eu manual mention this too, it's said that the efforts of the single nations couldn't stop the invasion, so they had to work together, putting their best men and material into the xcom project.
Still a nice idea for future multiplayer versions...
Hermano
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I like the explanation that XCOM's called to a terror site only when the local protection agency can no longer handle the problem. This would explain why some UFO's (particularly the smaller ones) would be detected as going on a terror mission but when you let them go they just dissappear and no terror mission follows.

But when a sizable alien force goes on a terror mission that local forces can not handle, I can imagine a battlescape where bodies of SWAT or something are scattered around. And there'd be a couple of members of local police running around wounded and trying to fend of the aliens.

Maybe, if you manage to rescue some people from the local enforcement, they'll join you with no initial charge.
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I like the research idea.

Maybe we could take this one step further and when you buy stuff, instead of just having one price you have loads of prices, and you can either opt to have the cheapest, or go for something slightly less cheap, but from the country who has just recently had several terror sites, to repair diplomatic relations.

I think this should be like Apoc. Then we add a few more things (like I have just suggested) and we would have a reasonably realistic financial side and diplomatic side to a very unrealistic game. But that would be GREAT!
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  • 2 months later...

i used some ideas like this to make an xcom game there were several teams. however it was only a geoscape and a map of the uk, i named it X-UK DEFENSE

there were

 

-->Military

-->terrorists (sirius)

-->xcom

-->civilian craft (terror missions on planes/boats!)

-->aliens

 

it was really good, 2D slow and a really big file size with poor graphics but seeming i a half brained skitzophrenic monkey made it, it rocked.

evrything worked (buy sell etc) except research manufacture and battle.

unfortunately it got infected and due to its unusual laanguage it was in, norton couldn't fix it entirely boo hoo. all that remains is a crappy backup which i never updated.

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How about in a terror mission, you enter a building, and find it is a barracks/hospital, with several injured soldiers. You patch them up, using a medikit, then give them plasma pistols that you use for secondary weapons. They become NPCs, who act as bodyguards. They actively give you backup as well as moving to discover/kill aliens. Maybe they also instantly give you map info for rescuing them??

 

---> THAT is the commander. On me, on me...... Fire at will....

 

They would move in the civilians turn. Maybe they would also protect the civs, and herd them into an easily defensible area?

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if we want to simply skip the soldiers because they take too long to make, we can simply state, that the goverment "pulled out special forces at time of your arrival to prevent further cassualties" Edited by mikker
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Like in the x-com series we all know that aliens do genetics engineering and stuff like that. So they create mutants and other species. What about, when they throw over the government, they use the local people for genetic mutation in order to make soldiers of them? :wink: So shortly said, they make a new specie :)
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Like in the x-com series we all know that aliens do genetics engineering and stuff like that. So they create mutants and other species. What about, when they throw over the government, they use the local people for genetic mutation in order to make soldiers of them? :wink: So shortly said, they make a new specie :)

they did this in the original xcom:, albeit after you lose.

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Would it be too easy if countries under alien control could be taken back? Afterall if controlled nations fight for aliens, sending forces against X-Com, intercepting aircraft and denying my money it is a WAY serious setback.

 

Could it be that controlled country needs a battleship missioned at capital each month? Say, about 3 battleships try such mission in a month, if all are defeated and at least one captured intact, diplomacy would be checked again as people see the evidence of their leaders decadency?

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Building on the rescuing of conventional military idea:

 

under special circumstances, perhaps certain soldiers will join X-com. For example, you save a group of 5 soldiers, including a lieutenant. You then have a small chance of the ranking officer being recruited into the X-com program and you get him in the base that the rescuing craft came from. He'll have a superior rank and boosted stats. Nothing special though. They're not supposed to be super-soldiers; I'm thinking that saved officers can be more like an alternative to rookies if your hardcore vets get killed or wounded. Kind of like getting a new member who's not Soooo far behind your main squad stat-wise. Good idea?

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I had never thought it ridiculous that X-Com were a stand alone force. After all, they recruit the very finest soldiers, scientists, and engineers from all over the globe. The very cream of humanity. They are able to achieve things far beyond any single organisation on Earth. Only they have access to experience, research and skills from all over the globe.
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I Join to that tough. X-Com is an organisation that picks up "la Creme-the-la-Creme" personal all over the world <_< . But the idea of soldiers joinning the fight in the middle could be helpfull in battle. :D
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Maybe you can send in your own counter agents to stop the friendly countries from signing a pact with the aliens or maybe try to turn some enemy bases to your side with diplomacy? But it would be way to hard to take back a country that has already signed a pact with the aliens... the aliens would have so many spies, terrorists, soldiers in the country by the time to take bake the country. It would also be in ruin because the enemy would not want to go down with out a fight. The aliens also would have already infultrated there governement.

 

So in other words... if you take the country back the spies already in that counrty would

A: Locate your bases by placing a tracer with the money and equipment they transfer

B: Place a Bomb with the money and equipment they transfer

C: Plant spies into your base due to them being in the recruitment pool

D: Sending in a covert strike team to kill your people wile they sleep

E: Transfer you fake money every month so you are really in debt

F: If they get there hands on a nuke from there weapon that countries weapon stores frame x-com for setting of a nuclear device

G: or in the very least place a strong poison in your people's food

 

So even if you do take back the country you would need to spend alot of money tracking down the enemy's covert teams and mostlikely the world would find out about x-com...

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WOOO.... too much 007 and too much Splinter Cell. :P just joking! But thinking on it..... :rolleyes:

 

C.I.A Worker - Sir!! SIR!!! I have important news!!!

General - What is it soldier?

 

C.I.A Worker - We found out that George Bush is really..... BEING CONTROLED BY AN ETHERAL!!!!!

 

General - THAT'S THE BIG NEWS?!? DON'T MAKE ME PANIC WITH SOMETHING THAT EVERYBODY KNOWS!!!!!!

 

:devillaugh:

 

Ideas to think of....

Edited by Black Dash
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  • 3 weeks later...
Guest Azrael

Why don't we place some policemen and other security forces in cities and towns?, they could serve as both help for the X-Corps and decoy for the aliens' fire. I always thought it was unrealistic to think that there wasn't any police or even military in big cities like New York or Paris back in UFO: Enemy Unknown. Maybe we could give the player some information regarding the police or security, like where they are located, maybe even a radio communication with these forces, it would add another spark of realism to the game and add another dimension to the strategy in battles.

What do you think?

 

:argue:

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  • 2 months later...

That would be cool!

'This is a terror assistance mission. The New York SWAT team are already on site and have engaged the enemy/aliens but are not faring well. They have called for your assistance. Your objective is to eliminate the aliens while limiting civilian casualties. *andthen* Medkit the remnants of the SWAT team and they provide auxillary support.

 

Mission result: Good (country 'likes' Xcorps more, and vice versa)

Non-X-Corps military personal casualties(counting from the X-corps arrival: high (no difference to country diplomacy) low (country 'likes' X-corps more?? *Thanks for keeping some of my special forces intact!!*)

 

Also the buy,sell, get-US-researched-item-for-sale ideas are good. That would give us a 'sophisticated' economics model

Edited by awof
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  • 1 month later...

I really like the idea of being able to take countries back. It kinda annoyed me in XCOM that once a country was subverted, it was over. I'm thinking it'd be quite cool if there were a few related mission types eventually, such as:

 

"Avert Government Subversion" - if you are doing really bad diplomatically, you have a chance to make up for it tactically by busting the deal between the aliens and your sponser country. This would be a lot like a terror mission, except ALSO with a landed Alien UFO- the size would vary based on the country and the importance of the deal to the aliens. It would be very hard due to the fact that the aliens would have been allowed to enter with plenty of soldiers and tank-like things for defence.

 

"Alien Overthrow Mission" - to overthrow a subverted sponser nation, you'd first have to destroy all alien bases in that country. Once this is over, two or three sites would light up for "overthrow" missions. You basically have to remove the aliens from important government or military positions without hurting civilians. Then once you've done those outskirt missions, the government would re-establish itself, assuming you can keep the country free of additional alien bases until the end of the month. Obviously these missions should be hard enough to make people WANT to avoid diplomatic trouble, but not impossible, either- they'd be for when you've already saved over your backup, but you really need that funding.

 

Both of those mission types should be worth a TON of points to pull off- crashing a deal negotiation should be able to sufficiently impress the country that XCOM is worth keeping around :)

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Heh, aye, I agree with that :D

 

However, some countries may be so inclined to ally themselves with the aliens for whatever reasons (promises of technology, non aggression pacts, etc) and if you were to crash the negotiations, the Humans may also fight you. I think that one should encounter major problems trying to stop a country from making deals or retake a country already with the aliens, depending on how much the country hates X Com. If a country feels safer with the aliens than X Com, one will need to change their mind, I think :devillaugh:

 

Perhaps some sort of rating for each country to show it's trust for X Com. It could be secret, though I think that since we subject lots of people to polls, I think it should be available to the players, but it shouldn't be the exact number. Help from X Com would increase X Com support and ignoring the country would decrease it, of course. The less the rating, the more work would have to be done. Really low ratings may make it where the country will see X Com as they used to see the aliens: as terrorists. Only force, incredibly good work elsewhere, or huge bribes will convert them back. Even when converted back to X Com, they should have really low funding, if any, for a while as they rebuild, try to get rid of the remaining aliens, and gain trust in X Com again.

 

On a slightly side note, the rating could also affect terror sites in other ways. If one's rating is low in the country, one may face Human "freedom fighters" who favor the aliens. Of course, this should work backwards as well, where one has a high rating and finds freedom fighters favoring X Com. These freedom fighters aren't as good as the X Com commandos, but are better than civilians with guns. I always wondered why none of the civilians carried any guns...

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Adding economics to weapon selling would be REAL nice, I imagine the US military would outbid many countries to buy that very first Heavy plasma cannon...

Or that first Sectoid corpse... Wait, maybe they already HAD one :D

 

And we definitely need other soldiers traces... By the time the skyranger got there they might all be wipped out, but they would most definitely surround a terror site...

Edited by Paladin
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The explanation about the X-Force being called only when the local forces fail to contain the aliens got me thinking.

That is, since in most cases it will take the player a few hours to land an X-Force team at the terror site, the terror site should look like a major battlezone: damaged buildings, burned-out terrain, corpses. There will be civilian survivors to rescue, ofcourse, or maybe even military/police, but the mission should look like a place where the Aliens stayed and attacked for a time.

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Agreed. Also, if you get there really quickly, there should be reletively little destruction- someone noticed the UFO nearby and reported it ASAP. But if you take too long, suddenly you have a whole lot more civilian deaths to compensate for, and the handy police/SWAT/local army guys are all but wiped out :D

 

As for countries not trusting XCOM... I think that is pretty much reflected in their funding levels whether they trust you or not, isn't it?

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What about civilians defending themselves? A lot of people in the U.S. have guns of their own. I know if aliens landed in my backyard, I would hide in my room with what ever weapons available (Baseball bat in my case. (Would probably be only effective against Sectoids though.)).
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What about civilians defending themselves? A lot of people in the U.S. have guns of their own. I know if aliens landed in my backyard, I would hide in my room with what ever weapons available (Baseball bat in my case. (Would probably be only effective against Sectoids though.)).

 

Perhaps civilians get kinda low-accuracy pistols and, in rarer occasions, rifles, and only in countries like the USA or Switzerland? (ie. where gun laws encourage civilians to own firearms) Then those with guns would run away... and generally act paniced and stupid (mostly trying to find a hiding place, though) but if an Alien got too close, they'd try and do some damage.

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What about civilians defending themselves? A lot of people in the U.S. have guns of their own. I know if aliens landed in my backyard, I would hide in my room with what ever weapons available (Baseball bat in my case. (Would probably be only effective against Sectoids though.)).

 

Perhaps civilians get kinda low-accuracy pistols and, in rarer occasions, rifles, and only in countries like the USA or Switzerland? (ie. where gun laws encourage civilians to own firearms) Then those with guns would run away... and generally act paniced and stupid (mostly trying to find a hiding place, though) but if an Alien got too close, they'd try and do some damage.

I agree... perhaps one or two civilians in terror sites could be policemen?

And if we arrive quickly enough on a UFO crash and there are some military present (or corpses if we arrive late), that would add a whole lot more flavor to the game... Perhaps some government agencies/military would try to steal teh Crashed UFO for themselves? :D

 

But Regular civies carrying guns, maybe not... The most violent countries in the world are South Africa, Colombia, and 2-3 others in front of the US (The leading industrialised county in terms of murders)...

source: http://www.nationmaster.com/country/us/Crime

You would'nt have that kind of gun-carrying civilian in Canada, most people simply don't lock their doors at night here... And no one does during the day :LOL:

Why? Ever Seen "Bowling for Columbine"? You gotta see that documentary... VERY informative...

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  • 2 weeks later...
Guest alex the greater

i like the each nation has its own army idea and the civilyans defending themselves idea

but whatabout giving civilyans and solders difrent languidegs

see each solder can speak english and posably one outher languide if thay are form a non english speaking country and prehaps you can teach your men aditonal languidegs between mishions. civalyans and local solders however can only speak one languidege (maby thare might be one or two who can speak two languidegs) which might cause some trobbles if you are trying to keep them out of troble)

 

 

also maby you could have the option of telling a country that tare is a ufo in thare airspace and that you are about to shoot it down (if thay dount like you thay might not want you overflying thare country) this could lead to intresting international incedents eg

 

your dectect a large scout flying over russa. the russains dount like you and you dount think thay will like you sending interseptorsr into thare skys so you dount tell them and scramble interscptors covertley. the russans dectect your fighters but not the ufo and thay think you interseptors are ufos. thay scramble thare migs. this i gona be hard to explan to your boss.

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Guest Azrael

yeah!, and add a little surprise to terror missions!

Let's see... the aliens are terrorising Montevideo... again, oh wait!, five marines are pinned down at the south of the terror site!, x-com to the rescue!

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  • 2 weeks later...

http://www.xcomufo.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=2777

 

Since my idea was already discussed on earlier topics, I'm taking their conclusions into account and adding in my own ideas to the soup.

 

 

OK, so world's nations didn't sell all their weapons to fund X-Com. But the very existence of such an agency is based on the fact that no world power holds military technology that's able to surpass aliens. Fighters, tanks and elite infantry cannot hold against alien hordes. But they should still try, right? A world power cant just hold up its hand in the air when it's borders are violeted.

 

So your fighter planes will join in battle with other planes. You'll encounter military on tactical missions, police in cities and so forth. heck, maybe that crazy farmer ted might try to take on the aliens with his buckshot.

 

I think that's a great idea. But should the situation be static? Maybe not all nations are part of the X-com from the start. I could certainly see USA for example trying to fight the aliens themselves. And after learning through the hard way they'd join the X-Com.

 

Having some nations trying to go solo or stay neutral can be used for other aims as well. Let say Japan doesn't want to fight the aliens, untill they get attacked by a large alien fleet. Then X-Com comes to the rescue. Japan decides to drop their pacifistic stance and joins, giving you new technology as well (Mechas anyone? :P).

 

I'd really like to see humans having their own tech trees as well, instead of just stealing alien tech. This way diffirent games would have more variety, IE if you concentrate on researching alien tech you'd get the standard plasma based weaponry, but if you'd try to keep those undecided (=one's that are not paying)nations under your wing as well, you'd get alternative research options to rival aliens.

 

Additionally, as technology is developed, if you decide to sell your military secrets to other nations, they might decide that they don't need X-Com anymore since they're powerful enough as they are. Should sales of advanced technology affect diplomatic relations as well? Maybe your technology can be stolen as well?

 

Having certain ammount of chaos on the diplomatic side of the game could be used to add in extra preassure to the player. Aliens keep on coming in with larger vessels and stronger types of troops. And some nations will break the alliance, to side with the aliens or to go rogue.

 

In short: the world situation wouldn't be static. Your progress in game would affect a whole lot of things, more than just the weapons your men are carrying.

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