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XCOMUFO & Xenocide

Alien Technology Advancement


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EDIT: Oops. Just realised htis post could have been better placed elsewhere! Sorry :wacko:

 

Hello all. Only found this site today and I have to say I am over the moon! It all looks fantastic so far...

 

Anyway, perhaps this has already been brought up and apologies if it has, but how about givin the enemy a research tree too?

 

Their research would be based on the human equipment they manage to get hold of, eg from raiding bases (quick snatch and run jobs as well as full on assaults), taking bodies of dead soldiers from the battle field, etc.

 

I am not sure if this is too much programming etc, so ignore me if it is ^_^ Their research tree would obviously be automatic but could only progress provided they had the right gear. E.g., they might be able to design a fairly inefective defence against projectile weaponry after gaining battlefield experience of being shot by bullets. However, they could develop far superior armour against bullets if they ever managed to get hold of a pistol with a full clip... :unsure:

 

It would certainly add flavour to the game and make it more dynamic. The aliens would become tougher as the game progressed but it wouldn't be as it is in so many other games, i.e., where you get a big gun and shortly after, the enemy gets better armour for absolutely no logical reason, kinda defeating the purpose of having the gun!

 

This way you could hold technological 'superiority' not just by researching but by also defending your own technology and research too. (Opens up opportunities for a base add on which self destructs labs etc if remotely triggered - you might lose a lot of research etc but at least the aliens might not get hold of that valuable plasma resistant armour you are developing) :explode:

 

Anyway, just an idea! :D

Edited by Miklatov
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yeah, it would be cool to have the aliens start to impliment what they have learned about the human genome and other terrerstrial animals and start to improve their units based on that knowledge. Edited by fux0r666
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yeah, it would be cool to have the aliens start to impliment what they have learned about the human genome and other terrerstrial animals and start to improve their units based on that knowledge.

 

Well, they could develop bio-weapons... I can see interesting missions profiling on the horizon here... :devillaugh:

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yeah, it would be cool to have the aliens start to impliment what they have learned about the human genome and other terrerstrial animals and start to improve their units based on that knowledge.

 

Well, they could develop bio-weapons... I can see interesting missions profiling on the horizon here... :devillaugh:

 

It would certainly add a whole new mission dimension, yeah.

 

Like I mentioned before, the whole base attack missions would not all have to be about the aliens trying to destroy your base.

 

They could be trying to steal technlogy (you might have to defend a lab. If the aliens enter and leave successfully, they gain an item important for their research tree to continue in much the same way as happens with humans).

 

They could be trying to kidnap a commander. Come on! It's about time they tried after all the commanders we have locked up and poked with sticks! :D If they captured a commander, he could tell them important information which could open up a sub-branch on their tech tree, etc etc..

 

The consequences would be very real - not just a case of losing 'points' at the end of every month. Imagine seeing an alien scarper from your base and fly off. you think, "thank god they left. They must have got scared. Big girl's blouses!" A few missions down the line, you notice that your soldier's plasma weapons are having less effect on the bad guys. "hmm... that armour they are wearing looks familiar....not disimilar to ours.... SH*T!"

 

There must be loads of missions that could be implemented.

 

"Aliens found on farm rustling sheep!" :unsure: What could they possibly want with sheep? Best go stop em.

 

I would be more than happy to have a bash at designing a preliminary tree. I would need to see the human tech tree of course. Is that easily found?

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  • 3 weeks later...

Yeah, but the aliens don't research technology or science. They research Earth, and us. Humanity is doing research so it can win battles, aliens are doing research so can win the war.

 

Example 1

 

At the beginning of Enemy Unknown, the Interceptor could beat the Scout. And at the end of Enemy Unknown, the Interceptor could beat the Scout. And at the start of Xenocide, the Intercepter-equivalent can beat the Scout equivalent. But at the end of Xenocide, a group of five Interceptor-equivalents can't beat a single Scout-equivalent.

 

Why? At the beginning of the game an Interceptor is optimized for Earth's gravity and atmosphere, and the Scout is optimized for someplace else. As the turns pass the aliens are tweaking the Scout to make it work better, but humanity has no tweaking room. Thus the Scout in the end may not have more passengers or more weapons. But at the begining it had airfoils calibrated for 9.9 meters per second per second of gravity, and the end they are calibrated for 9.81 meters per second per second.

 

The game effect? Reactive research can't work. At turn 100 (throwing numbers out), when Battleships start appearing, the player will say "I'll start on the Avenger research". But by the time he has Avengers, the Battleships are too strong for them. But if he was producing Avengers in turn 90, then the Battleships in turn 102 can be shot down. And in the wreckage the player finds technology to give the Avenger better weaponry, so it *can* deal with the later Battleship designs.

 

 

Example 2

A much shorter one. The aliens attack an X-com base, during the combat the commander is stunned and taken back to the base airlock whle comatose. And because he knows so much about X-com base design, Plasma Defenses are now 1/2 as effective against future assaults!!

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Guest alex the greater

also the aliens might be cokey at the begining and not giving it a fuill effort caus thay reguard us a primitives

 

so at the begining of the game thay arnt taking this invasion seroysly but we ar which gives us the upper hand at the beguining at least

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also the aliens might be cokey at the begining and not giving it a fuill effort caus thay reguard us a primitives

 

so at the begining of the game thay arnt taking this invasion seroysly but we ar which gives us the upper hand at the beguining at least

Yeah, they underestimate us in the beginning, and with Good reason! ^_^

It's the only advantage our guys in T-shirts get...

 

I also like the idea of having a few random base missions, like if an alien breaks loose of confinment...

"Damn, I KNEW we should not have brought in that live Chrysalid...

HOW MANY scientists were working in that lab???!!!"

:devillaugh:

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all good ideas, but that would be danged hard to program, and could end up giving the players time limits. The aliens may develope, i don't know, but not that much
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I agree they should not develop a tech tree, they merely need time to bring in their nastier toys (battleships don't USUALLY come in the first month).

Maybe they just need time to develop/adjust/spread a planet-wide bio-weapon, that could spawn a few interesting missions.

 

That aside, I also like the idea of having to explore a secret "Area51" kind of facility, where the aliens would barge in and you'd have to keep them from stealing back precious info... And if we're sucessfull we'd discover that "some" governments did not disclosed everything they knew... :D

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maby you could have a roswell side quest whare you find out what is in area 51 and what really hapened at roswell
It would need a really good and creative CT, i think that 51 has become too much a standard in every movie/game that involves something mysterious. Maybe some other government/country like Russia or China or maybe even any country that has defected? They surely have some projects going on...
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Right, it's SO much used up it's become more cliché than anything... On the other hand, it's also the most known, and it would make sense in a world where aliens are threatening the human race...

Besides, from the looks of it, the Roswell crash could very well be a mere medium scout of Sectoids... :D

We got more material from our first two UFO crashes, but they'd had about 50 years to study the thing... Hence the whole "Rescue secret facility" operation could be the key to the Alien Origins Research, as well as a prerequisite for some of the Power source, Alien Navigation, and Plasma weapon principles. IMO, those would really take dozens of years to learn their working principles to be able to build new ones (simply using them is simpler though...)

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Guest alex the greater

well the us army has been focesed on tryin to make a working replaca of the med scout that crashed in roswell but have been unsesful cause thay lake the xeniem nessary to make it fly and thay have not been able to reaserch plasma wepons cause the scout diddent have any

 

 

my idea for a roswell side quest would start like this

 

ALIENS TERORISE

GROOM LAKE

 

shortly after you get a fax from the penagon ordering you not to interfere the situation is under countrol (if you ignore them two JSFs will chase you skyranger out away from navada)

 

30 min later you receve a garbeled destress call from area 51

"maday maday this is groom lake @#@^% have *^^%*%d the base aliens ocupy levels A-D @$%^*&%#^eld up in level E and F

oh Shiaaaaaa #)E%*@&&(%%$%$*&^*%E"

(line goes dead)

now you can go to groom lake and fight thro 5 levels to save A51 and this would onlly be the beguining

Edited by alex the greater
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Sounds good to me... I meant that it should not be the default cheezy story found anywhere. If anyone can add a some original ideas to it this could be very nice. Making it required to research seems to be one such idea, but what if you fail? Game over?
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It sounds like an interesting idea. The research that X-Corps does would be mostly to use the weapons. You would need to recover the 50yr+ old studies on the technology, in order to build them. With that sort of understanding, you'd probably be able to make a few designs of your own. If you don't, then you would be stuck with what the aliens "give" you. It wouldn't be necessary to do, but it would be worth it.
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Yeah, that's what I had in mind. :D

I really think it would add flavor to the game, even more if you have a harder time if you fail that one... Maybe it could take 5 or 10 times more time to reasearch UFO power source/navigation/construction if we fail...

That way it would not be completely frustrating if we fail it, but tougher...

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