31 replies to this topic

[Monkey Hamer]

How about UFOs with IDLH (Imediate Danger to Life and Health, fire service term) atmosphers? IE you would need to have a breathing apparatus to survice in them.

These could be UFOs with an atmosphere suited to an alien species that is devoid of O2, very toxic, etc... leathal to humans.

IE if you has an SCBA (Self Contained Breathing Apparatus) with a 60 minute air cylinder you would have 60 turns worth of air to do your thing in the IDLH zone.

Or if you had a rebreather you may get up to 5 hours or more of air.

It would be a piece of equipment you would have to buy for your non power armored grunts. The power armor could have the rebreathers built in.

So, how about IDLH UFOs?

[Tuoppi]

Floaters (or whaterver they now are) might actually prefer that kind of environment. It is actually strange that all the alien species like the same normal air so much...???

[Monkey Hamer]

Floaters (or whaterver they now are) might actually prefer that kind of environment. It is actually strange that all the alien species like the same normal air so much...???

Right on.

I could imagine that certain species might want to have a specialized atmoshpere that would be hazradous to your health.

It would make you work now tactics, and that air reserve ticking donw would at tension.

I tihnk it would make an interesting addition.

It wouldnt have to be that complex, just remember to take a realatively cheap breathing apparatus for your troopers, or maybe if you breach the UFO hull the atmoshpere would clear out after a variable amount to turns.

Which maybe you need to take a hand held gas detector to determin if its safe.

There is so much cool gear that could be incorporated.

[Tuoppi]

Picture a crashed UFO, yellowish heavy fog slowly flowing from opened door...

If you rush in without equipment, maybe lose about 5hp+ 2stun /turn? With plain breathing aid, reduced to 2hp/turn(due to exposed skin)+time limit. With power armor or similar ->no penalties except time limit? Maybe flying suit would have unlimited time as it can be used in mars-mission.

[j'ordos]

Heh. T-Shirt armor could also be used in the Mars mission

Just think of alien bases, are you going to assault them if you lose 2hp/turn?

[Arachnid]

And maybe the atmosphere should be researchable. Something like:
UFO1 -> UFO Atmosphere -> Breathing Masks

Or maybe the atmosphere would be flamable (YEAAAH!! One shot and the whole UFO is on fire anyone wants a sectoid steak?? ).

Edited by Arachnid, 14 March 2004 - 02:58 PM.

[j'ordos]

Floater Flambé ::

Though why'd you need different breathing masks for different atmospheres? Besides, wouldn't it be more logical to research atmospheres based on races instead of UFO size?

[Tuoppi]

T-shirts in mars??? Again something i should have noticed a looooong time ago.

Aye, base with toxic atmosphere. Would give those poor floaters a fighting chance... They only need to hide for long enough. Although no worries after getting that environmental armor.

IMO this atmosphere thing should be for floaters only, would add to their uniqueness. The ultra-advanced life support system is just plain text without.

[UnknownWarrior]

If this atmosphere were in every UFO, I wouldn't play the game. Try doing a battleship ship raid losing 5 hp a turn. Maybe for the small ones, but for the big ones it would just ruin the game because you wouldn't be able to clear the UFO.
I'm done babbling now

[Monkey Hamer]

If this atmosphere were in every UFO, I wouldn't play the game. Try doing a battleship ship raid losing 5 hp a turn. Maybe for the small ones, but for the big ones it would just ruin the game because you wouldn't be able to clear the UFO.
I'm done babbling now

Ummm, did you miss the part about useing one of these???

http://www.isistealth.com/

[Otterboy]

Wow that thing looks the nuts

Edited by Deimos, 21 March 2004 - 10:53 AM.

[Breunor]

Just for clarification, a game turn is around 4 seconds, so a breather giving you 30 minutes of air equals 450 game turns. It simply becomes an extra item you have to carry in your backpack at base attacks and crash sites. Having the option of HTH or ballistic damage possibly damaging the breather would be nice, opening up the option of taking more damage after the first round. If you kept a spare just in case, you could avoid the effects. I would simplify it and make the effects similar to smoke inhilation like xcom had though.

[UnknownWarrior]

Ummm, did you miss the part about useing one of these???

I didn't miss it, it is just that it would be another object to carry and weight down your soldiers with

Edited by UnknownWarrior, 21 March 2004 - 08:33 AM.

[Paladin]

I love the idea of having different atmospheres in UFOs, it could even be vision-obscuring smoke... Perfect for close-quarter fighting...

Oh, and we HAVE to get one of those Methane breather toilet à la Babylon5 ::

[UnknownWarrior]

Im ok with it lowering my soldiers vision, but killing them bothers me

[Paladin]

Im ok with it lowering my soldiers vision, but killing them bothers me

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Exactly, our soldiers would bring Breath masks if the atmosphere in UFOs was that toxic...

[Paladin]

Is'nt that already the case? I mean, damaged UFOs already are full of smoke... Then again, it's not that obscuring...
All we were saying is that maybe the natural atmosphere inside UFOs could be a different color (although the plain, exotic light gray is cool), but maybe some could have red, green, blue, or even simply a black stuffed feel inside...

[Paladin]

On the other hand, explosions DO create smoke, just not as much...
I agree Smokie grenades should make a LOT more smoke than in the original UFO... That way they'd be even more usefull...

[Paladin]

Hmmm, the cooling gas would'nt happen to be poisonous for the aliens too, would'nt it?? (A)

[Paladin]

Well, yeah, it would be entirely possible that the aliens themselves are vulnerable to it's fumes

[floater medic]

or it could get em high (stoned/drugged up for those of u from places who use diff slang)

[Paladin]

It already does, they can get uncounscious if they stay in their exploded UFO long enough... VERY long enough...

[sir_schwick]

What if you could configure smoke grenades so they could spew other gases too? Part of alien UFO and base defense would be gas traps and areas. Another useful tool would be the gas tunneler. This device is tunnel through the wall of a UFO and placed so it spews gas inside.

[Snakeman]

Interesting thought on adding more gas type grenades. However, I think it might be better to introduce another separate tool for that "tunneling" thing.

Something portable that doesn't use explosives, yet can drill through the alien ship hulls/walls.

Perhaps this drill its self is made out of alien alloys. I was thinking of an analogy to this element(s) and how tough it is, but all I could come up with was diamonds. I don't know, can diamond cut something made of diamonds? (I don't know anything about jewlery making so someone who does can correct me heh).

Anyway, point is, use whichever toughest element the aliens make stuff with that you can also reproduce, incorporate those things into this drilling tool for cutting open alien walls and ship hulls, then tack on the fancy atmospheric effect stuff with the new smoke/gas grenades.

[x0563511]

Anyone else read Battlefield Earth?

The main alien race breathed a gas extremely toxic to O2 metabolizers (and visa versa).

That gas also happened to explode violently when exposed to Uranium or any other similar radioactive material.


You would have to make sure to allow the aliens to have their own equipment, otherwise you could simply blow a hole in the side of the UFO (provided there isn't already one from the crash) and wait for them to die.

There would also be actual airlocks, with a cycle time... that would make things interesting.

[sir_schwick]

I imagine with the vast resources of the alien empire they could use species whose atmosphere is compatible with Earth atmosphere. Ethereals might be the only exception.

[Snakeman]

The only other thing I can think of to touch on in addition to what's been said so far is one of balance. Techs in the other game cancelled out the tech that came before and you rarely saw certain tech used beyond the top notch stuff.

If the aliens can develop some portable breathing unit or suit to cancel some of the effects out of these gases, then those types may become useless. I'd propose giving only the best gear and distributing it out amongst the alien officers first and for a much longer duration before their footsoldiers begin to get them.

This would continue to make the officers at least, harder targets to experiment on with these gases. Other aspects should be looked at too, like dissipation effects and how wide of a dispersal these aresenals should have, and back fire scenarios if any of the stuff was corrosive to your men in their best armor.

Something you could give the aliens too, and someone already said something about this I think, is you could make their bases have varying degrees of atmospheric conditions where some parts of the base would be alright for soldiers with no head gear/breathing apparatus and others wouldn't be safe...i.e. Remember those rooms they have with the funky plant life? Some of the plants that had animations to them looked like they might be good canditates of flora to be spewing some alien pollen into the air or something else equally nasty (the strange funnel looking ones anyway).

Also you could examine the effects of each sort of atmospheric condition a unit would face, scale its lethality that way, do the same for the new grenades, then also look at each effect by what armor if any is used. It might be one other way to reuse older armor too come to think of it.

Personal Armor is better than T-Shirts, but once you have Power Armor, that gets phased out. Same with Flying Suits vs Power Armor. What I propose is find something that's vulunerable to flying suits not so vulnerable to the other types, to force us to keep inferiorish stuff.

[nopoet406]

Elite, anti-alien troopers boarding a crashed UFO without conducting radiation scans or wearing protective gear wouldn't happen outside of Star Trek Voyager

I reckon you could implement some kind of penalty for alien atmosphere, but it would have to be mild to take into account the protection the troopers are wearing. Perhaps high background levels of cosmic radiation sap energy more quickly, making them tired sooner. Losing health would be a bit much especially if you're facing tougher aliens who take longer to kill.