37 replies to this topic

[I Come in Peace!]

I've always wondered why in the X-Com series (at least UFO) the armies of countrys like US, Russia, China, France, and so on, which have strong armies don't aid X-Com with military support!?
I can't imagine EVERY (no matter with strong or weak army) self respecting country wouldnt respond to a attack, even from aliens!?
My idea is why not add soldiers to Terror sites?Of course only the large ones like military bases or capitals.The soldiers will have no armor, only basic weapons (rifles and pistols), just "Snap shot" and low TU's.This will both help to boost the realism of the game and will also help the player at the initial stages of the game, when it's hard to cope with Terror sites.Besides I think it sound better than "armed civillians force".What do you think?

[LordT]

The "offial" story is that x-com is the Earths Army composed of all the worlds best countries, so, in away, the military is aiding.

There's lots lovely fan-fiction btw

[Breunor]

One of the things about terror sites IIRC, is they're not in major cities, only the Mayberrys of the world. So it may be that the military couldn't get there any sooner in some cases. It could also be that you have special radar systems to detect UFOs, while most countries don't have that tech, and can't even see the UFOs.

Initial terror sites should be tough, I'm not surprised when I lose 2 or 3 (or more) soldiers during one early in the game. If it's made easier, it wouldn't be a terror site, just a ho-hum site, right?

[mikker]

No. I like to see this as a war. I like to see the X-com/Xenocide, whatever, team to be like top-secret agents , eg. FBI, CIA, With are undercover. If an group of english agents have been discovered in the german reaserch facility they were spying opon, and they are outnumbered, would the army respond to their help and come overrunding the facility with the entire army? I don't think so. They have enogth problems with the germans in the west front, and even if they could get there, they would not. They are fighting their own war.

The armies ARE giving them men and weaponry (for a fee... again, they are fighting their own war).

[Breunor]

I understand the idea of having some military response, it would make sense that a country would respond to such an attack, but that's a bit outside the scope of the original game. If countries could fight off the alien invaders themselves, x-com's scope would be reduced a lot.

This concept could take off in a multiplayer version though, say where you have 2 players who are both on earth, you could say each country you control requires a base for defense. Then the players could be fighting each other as well as aliens, as you try try to not only repel the aliens but take over control of the entire in the process. More of a multiplayer mod I guess.

[XcomVic]

how about having one or two surviving Military members that tried to respond to the threat but couldn't with their weapons. They would still be trying to help you (you could get control of them) but their weapons will be inadequete for the task at hand. you couldn't give them a plama either, because they havent been trained with them. just a thought....

[I Come in Peace!]

XcomVic's idea is pretty good and is what I originally thought.

[Breunor]

So do they tag along until you find a weapon they can use? Since you have to research even laser weapons, it would be expected that only xcom soldiers could use them, right? So the left over guys could only use standard weapons like pistol, rifle, autocannon? If they can use laser weapons, then they should be able to use plasma as well. Unless they have the same capabilities as your regular soldiers, I just don't see what use they would have. What part am I missing in the picture?

[Cubik]

Can't we use the national armies as the companies was used in APOC? They didn't really do anything for you, exept raid you once in a while. Wouldn't that make sense? The alien take over, for example, England, and uses their soldiers to attack your base. The aliens share info with the English, giving them info on where your base is located. The English could also attack your planes if you come to close to their airspace.

[revenant4]

OK I believe that the X-COM force is Secretive but who says other countries don't have their own secret armies???...everyone thinks the US is the only Force that has undercover agents or secret military units...I believe that other countries aiding the X-COM cause is very feasable and it would be a nice addition to have different races that are skilled in different ways depending on their surroundings during their upbringing...for example...Russians might have advantages in a snowy atmosphere...teh US might have an advantage in a Plains are...the list could go on and on...just a thought

[I Come in Peace!]

Breunor Posted on May 22 2003, 12:50 PM
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So do they tag along until you find a weapon they can use? Since you have to research even laser weapons, it would be expected that only xcom soldiers could use them, right? So the left over guys could only use standard weapons like pistol, rifle, autocannon? If they can use laser weapons, then they should be able to use plasma as well. Unless they have the same capabilities as your regular soldiers, I just don't see what use they would have. What part am I missing in the picture? 

the soldiers will have only basic weapons (including granades) and why not kevlar vest?Weaker than Personal Armor but thougher than nothing (this is could be available to XCom too).
EDIT:The soldiers may appear only if you're doing bad in the beggining

revenant4 Posted on May 22 2003, 09:40 PM
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OK I believe that the X-COM force is Secretive but who says other countries don't have their own secret armies???...everyone thinks the US is the only Force that has undercover agents or secret military units...I believe that other countries aiding the X-COM cause is very feasable and it would be a nice addition to have different races that are skilled in different ways depending on their surroundings during their upbringing...for example...Russians might have advantages in a snowy atmosphere...teh US might have an advantage in a Plains are...the list could go on and on...just a thought

Thats VERY good idea.Why not make the nationality of a agent boost some of his abilitys.Lets say the Russians are strong in winter terrain (Russia) and cityfight (Stalingrad)(more TU's in those lokations) , Americans (US) in plains (wild west) and night combat (SEALS, SWAt, ect.) (same as Russians), Chineese and Japanees in hand-to-hand combat and more stamina (martial arts), Europeans (like me ) in forests (tipycal for Europe) and shooting (snipers during WW2)...so what do you think?Is this possible?

[XcomVic]

i didnt realize i completely compied I Come In Peace's idea. sorry, I just glance at the thread and made the reply. anyhow, how about after the mission they go back home after a quick debrief from the MIBs? that is if they survive at all. if i were a Marine/soldier/whatever from a country and just helped out to deter a alien invasion in my city, i would want to stay and protect it again if it ever happened again.


what about equipping civs with pistols and the like... if in Real Life an alien invasion was at hand, you bet your donkey i would buy anything i could get my hands on, from M16s to RPGs....

[Breunor]

Having specialized stats due to stereotypes doesn't sound too good IMO. Wild west of the US? There hasn't been one in 100 years, all it was were settlers killing anything that moved, including each other. Most countries have special forces, even us stupid USA people know that. And all those special forces would have trained in every environment they had available to them prior to joining xcom. To actually code in differences in TUs or stats due to race would only cause trouble IMO. It's true that soldiers in WW2 became very skilled at certain types of warfare, but how does that translate in any way to their great great grandchildren?

Now if you used androids like I've heard were in Apoc, all you'd need are some overweight nintendo kids from any country to control them via a FPS interface, and the aliens wouldn't stand a chance. That's a stereotype being scientifically proven in the US, probably everywhere else too.

Edited by Breunor, 23 May 2003 - 07:26 AM.

[revenant4]

OK I see your point in the stereotyping but what if we look at it in a different perspective then...say there are Marines, Navy, and Army (and any other countries military) that train in specific type of geoscape warefare, even today that's true...it would make sense that the XCOM operatives are all advanced military soldiers...then you could say that the Navy are better trained in certain terrains and the Army in another...the whole point is that I believe this would have an interesting twist in the game when it came to what types of XCOM soldiers you sent into a mission...

[I Come in Peace!]

Well you're right.Army types goes better than nationality.But as you sad the importaint thing is to make the game more flexible.

[Deimos]

X-operatives will come from similar backgrounds to say the secret service in the States. They'd be at the top of their game. It wouldn't matter which service they originated from originally as when the brances of services X-operatives would come from would be places like Army rangers, Navy Seals Marine force recon and so on. In the Uk you'd get ops from the SAS, SBS, Marines and so on.

When you get to the level of training of these guys there isn't a terrain they aren't trained for. It pretty well documented the levels and diversity of the Navy seals training and yeah it's tough but there are some spec forces that make the Seals look like children.

Spetnatz for a start train in the wide variety of weather that Russia has to offer. The marines over here in the UK take potential members up into the harshest weather we have which can be pretty unpleasant before taking them up to places that make heck look like a holiday destination. They aren't the toughest though.

The SAS take potential recruits and throw them through the wettest coldest places in the UK (you've probably heard of Dartmoor, but we have worse places in the highlands of Scotland) and expose them to operations without food or shelter for weeks at a time before getting them to run up mountains with full packs on. That's just to see if they've got the right stuff to join. Once they've been told they can join, it's off to the Jungles of Burma, which is about the worst environment on the planet. The dropout rate is about 33% on the first day of training and remember that these guys are already in the military.

My point is that the soldiers that are bought in the game will be the absolute best the world has offer and trained in every environment we have to offer. The'yre trained to fight against any other human on the planet, the only problem is that they won't be fighting against humans so they're effectiveness is limited.

As for flexibility the soldiers are totally under your control and will do exactly as you say. No Ai or anything getting in the way, you can't get much more flexible than that

At the end of the day it's the limitation of the player rather than the troops that makes the game tough. I've taken 14 fresh recruits with rifles and baten a freshly fully stocked Snakeman base on Superhuman before and I've had my arse handed to me on scout ships when I first played the game on easy. The beauty of xcom is that the player decided where the troops come from. How effective they are is also entirely in the hands of the player.

If you go adding this and that to the mix you lose that, delicate perfect balance that xcom had.

[Cubik]

Can't we add (possibly v.1+) that each soldier can get better in handling diffrent weapons and/or weapon types? This way we would not have to add lots of weapon skills, just a little discreet list that states what kind of weapons the soldier is proficient with. So, a guy that constantly uses a pistol grows comfortable with it and gets better and better at using it. Seems realistic and resonable to me.

And how do you explain that all soldier starts on the same skill levels? Simple, all the guns in the game are protype, brand-new guns that no-one has used before. And no-one has of course used the aliens tech, so it only comes natural that no-one is skilled in using those. Higher skill with a certain gun type would result in better accuracity and the soldier spends less TU using the gun.

And I would like to tie in the countries even more. A hostile country would not allow you to build a base on their territory (don't remember if this was in the original) and a allied nation could give access to their radar equipment.

[Breunor]

Of course all these ideas can be considered for v1+. But do you want to be limited to a particular weapon? Say I train my soldiers to be experts with laser rifles, then I get heavy plasma. Now I'm back to a lower rating and have to start again? You figure that these highly trained soldiers will practice with every weapon they may encounter in the field. To have specialists sounds too much like min-maxing. They'd use the weapons anyways, but this allows the maximum benefit with the minimum penalty involved. You can't make the accuracy higher than normal with the preferred weapon, or you unbalance the game. So the accuracy is no higher than normal, but when you pick up any other weapon your accuracy drops below normal. That doesn't sound good either. Consider that the time in the battlescape is less than 10 minutes most of the time, and you might fire the weapon at targets 20 times most. You might do that 1-2 times per week. Compare it to 1 hour of training every day, using several different weapons on moving targets with audio and visual distractions to simulate battle conditions. You'd get just as much benefit while training with every weapon available. If I had a sniper who couldn't pick up a pistol or heavy gun and use it effectively, I'd get rid of him, he's a liability in the battle. If that rifle he cherishes so much isn't available, he becomes a waste of space IMO. "It may sound cruel soldier, but that's a cruel world out there! Those aliens won't let you run back for another rifle, and neither will I! Drop and give me 20!"

I'm not trying to pee on your campfire, IMO I just don't see what the benefit is to doing something like this. But that's the beauty of opensource, you can modify the code a million ways to make your own custom game. Well, I can't as I hardly know html code, let alone any programming code.

[Cubik]

"But do you want to be limited to a particular weapon"

I did wrote "weapon and/or weapon types". The types could be pistols, rifles, SMGs, Heavy.... or Normal, Laser, Plasma.

"If I had a sniper who couldn't pick up a pistol or heavy gun and use it effectively, I'd get rid of him, he's a liability in the battle."

I'm not talking about a HUGE bonus here, just a little something to give the soldier an extra edge. Maybe you should be able to control the soldiers training more, so that you could specialise on different weapon types. Also, I think that specialits would give the soldiers more personality and make the gameplay more interesting.

"You can't make the accuracy higher than normal with the preferred weapon, or you unbalance the game."

Ehhhh.... have you ever played an RPG? Where you become more and more skilled over time? If your statment is true, every kind of progress in a RPG would unbalance the game. Of course, you would have to put a stop to just how skilled you could get and the rate in which your learn (a untrained soldier gets skilled faster than a skilled soldier gets masterful) but I just can't see the problem with soldier that gets more skilled the more they do something.

[revenant4]

I would just like to say I like all the ideas stemming in this 1 post...I can't wait till this project comes out so the modders can have a go w/ the code...it will be very interesting to see what kinds of Mods will come...

[Breunor]

I understand what you mean about the skill increasing with practice. That's exactly what happens now. What I meant was that to balance the fact that you only get better at one type of weapon and not all weapons, you'd made the increase greater than it originally was, making the soldiers more accurate than they would normally be.

Say that you're accuracy starts like it always does, at some random number like xcom. Then as you use the weapon, any benefit is only for that class weapon only (pistol, rifle, heavy), but doesn't increase any faster than it originally did. When you pick up a new class of weapon, you're back at square one. When you go go to a new tech level, accuracy drops 5-10%, and then increases like it normally would. So if you're at 75 for laser rifle, plasma rifle starts at 65, heavy plasma starts at your original number, say it was 50. The skill doesn't increase any faster than the original, where all weapon skills increased together. The only change in game balance is that it's harder for the player.

I could see that being a workable option. If that was your idea from the start, let me apologize for not understanding what you meant. The way I originally read the idea was that on top of the regular increases for all weapons, an additional increase would be given for that particular weapon, making you better than you would have been in the original system. That was a stupid mistake on my part.

So let me recant my previous misgivings of your idea, I think it's wonderful, and could be an option for harder play. Maybe it could be worked into the superhuman difficulty, or the hardest level of the game.

[Cubik]

Wow, someone who likes one of my ideas . Haven't seem to have gotten very much support for my previous ones .

I should have added that I didn't think that should be a addition to the usual stat. The way I wrote it, it could have meant anything.

Hmm, I would like it added on all levels of difficuly though, but let's discuss that some more.

[Breunor]

I could see it being on the hard and superhuman levels to start, maybe other levels if other changes occur that give the humans an edge. A lot of the ideas for game changes benefit only the humans, so this could be used to balance that some.

[I Come in Peace!]

Wow.A lot happened here.The idea for the weapons skills is pretty good and will actually remake the "learning" period when a soldier uses new weapon.

...now if anybody doesn't mind lets got on-topic.Should we add soldiers or not?
As posted here before why not make them surrviviors of their unit which was dispached to respond to the alien aggression.Of course without the skill, training, and tecnology of X-Com most of them are being wiped-out.Of course few survive and when X-Com strike team arrives they join you...This just gave me an idea.They could be on the same level as your soldiers at the beggining of the game (I mean their stats) but have very low bravery.

[revenant4]

I'm going to have to say I like the idea that the soldiers of other countries should be AI controlled and just help you at random when they're not running in terror... ...I don't remember exactly who said this first but I think we are thinking of a lot of ideas that would make the game easier for the humans...if we had other countries aiding our cause I think there should be some kind of advantage for the aliens like reinforcements that drop in to help their buddies...all in all this is a good idea if the creators of this game can think of a way to balance it for the aliens as well

[sir_schwick]

A few things I want to say:

1) Almost no body knows X-COM exists. They are shadows, deja-vue, never existed.
2) Recruitment is through infiltrators in every government, those men mysteriously disappear and are X-COM for life.
3) Funding is basically money disappearing in a hole and appearing in X-COM hands.

These soldiers abilities and equipment are far beyond any conventional Earth troops.

In terror missions local police will probably try and fire on aliens until they panic because they do not drop. They will not fire on humans attacking the aliens. Much lower stats versus humans, although they can buy light pistols and such.

Also, I think you should be able to sell Terran weapon technology, and that technology would proliferate. Cops and any military personnel(only if you use channels to get troops to aline landing or crash spots) would be using those weapons and you could buy them.

[Snakeman]

I've always wanted to see some tech proliferate into the public's hands, but agree it should be militaries or the occasional civy cop on Terror sites and the like (anywhere else I can think of mission-wise that might involve civs).

For the first few game years anyway, I think these entities should eventually have full on access to the standard (to X-COM's perspective anyway) Earth gear. The cops would have access to all your pistols, rifles, flares, stun rods, medkits & perhaps motion trackers etc. Militaries could get all that plus all that high explosive Terrain ordinance, though maybe not seen as much.

Later maybe each group may get a spackling of laser tech thrown their way, but in any case, I believe it should mainly be Earth origin if not Earth developed stuff. But spread out the interval adequately in game time terms so we could see that progression of aquisition.

The only exception I might give any group besides X-COM to tap into alien tech would be rival criminal orgs or militaries that have been courting an alien alliance. For all of this though, I've simply been going on the notion of "Well, anything that's sellable has to wind up somewhere."

Let's just see some pleasant and not so pleasant ramifications for selling anything

[Torgen]

I like the idea of AI-controlled cops/ National Guard fighting the aliens at a terror site (the sites would have to be bigger than XCom 1 by a large margin and have more aliens, though.) I mean, that's the *staple* of science fiction/alien invasion movies- the police and National Guard are helpless against the aliens, and the hero(s) come in to save the day by using marvelous new weapons. :plasma:

Later in the game, those countries that have given you the most money can start using tech you've researched, though in very small amounts and much later than you started using it. The amount that would be used by AI human defense forces would depend on how much you have sold on the open market to fund operations.

This would be mostly for "flavor", and not to really make the player's life easier (though it would be cool to see a SWAT team take out a Snakeman, only to panic and run in fear from the Chryssalid! :o )

[sir_schwick]

What if you could sell Technology to companies?

It takes whatever company buys the tech a certain amount of time to integrate what you sell them. You get paid a lump sum at the beginning, but must let 10 or 20 scientists be consultants for a month or two. You also get paid royalties for the number of weapons sold(worldwide).

Companies will do derivative research after the initial, so you may want to be cautious about just selling Alien Alloys without selling the upgraded Earth Pistols, Rifels, etc.

I would also like to think that Alien stuff you sold ends up in the hands of Under-world, who fight aliens in certain cities(Hong Kong) or elite military and body gaurd units that gaurd the leaders aliens try to infect. Also, I would like to think alien pact brothers get a ton of alien gear for their normal troops, who fight you if they see you and ID you(takes about 20 turns).

[Snakeman]

I like the scientist/engineer consultant-to-private-companies-under-contract-with-X-COM bit. I think to correlate some functionality to what amount of alien tech proliferates (by this I mean anything that may very well get syphoned off from said companies without X-XOM's approval), be on a kind of sliding scale of demand by those contracting companies.

For instance you just touched on that briefly when you discussed derivative research they have to do for example to work with anything that needs alien alloys. That is to say, its not enough to have plasma pistols proliferate all that much or too quickly if you did not sell that many, but also did not sell much elerium (for the clip) or alien alloys.

The way it could work in practice though, with relation to those comapnies efforts is you could have a prompt by the consulting scientist of yours who asks you for the plans, specs, or samples of the next thing in line. It'd be up to the commander to accept or decline the request, or even to pull that consultant (or fire him) if you felt that the company had lax security or something (you started to see the wrong groups using tech you released to that firm).

Maybe there could be supplimental items to track for the scientists, such as royalty fees suddenly climbing for no reason. Perhaps he's in it for the dough or has his own agenda of some sort. In that case, fire his butt and assign a new consultant. So not only might you have the consulting company demand for specs, plans or samples to weigh in to decide to release or not, you add in that twist that your scientist consultant might be turncoat for the sake of lots of money.

The only aspect to all this that I'm not sure should be in is the way comapnies got infiltrated like Apoc. Dont' get me wrong, I think raid missions would be fun, but in this case, it might be easier (if not just hurtful to you financially by doing this...) pulling the rug out from under that company to begin with if too much stuff leaked into the public realm.

[sir_schwick]

Well I imagined selling the techs would basically open that pandora's box. Also, royalties go to you, so you want proliferation. Also, because elerium is so rare, the only ppl that use alien weapons are those who bought the clips and guns in tandem(new selling requirement). What I meant by derivative research was improved versions of earth weaopns. AA Pistols and AA Pistol ammo, etc. Lasers I figure could be sold too, so armeis woudl have laser weapons, but this would also encourage way more Mutons(true super soldiers) to come down.

[Snakeman]

Ah I see now, more like a way to somehow get more researched items. But to get them requires some flexibility on the part of the X-COM Commander, the scientist consultant and the contracting company (you need more man power and equipment than you can possibly mass produce in all your bases).

So in essense, X-COM would be attempting to help Earth countries help themselves (those on best terms anyway but one can't always control that w/fluctuations in political climates) to a reasonable technological degree. But they'd still need to be careful about selling anything it considers blacklisted goods (elerium, UFO navigation, construction, power sources to name a few).

Although one could speculate too that later on if those ideas of using alien ships was implimented for your side, you may very well have to decide to contract out some elements of the construction processes for some of it. After all, the confinements of X-COM base layout does not necessarily make for good testing ground, even though its as well stored there as anything hiding in Area 51.

[sir_schwick]

and you make a profit on the technology you sold. More weapons means more money. Now you have an additional way to rationalize not going to terror sites.

[T-1]

Hmm... How about if you sold tech that doesn't require elerium then you'd eventually see it on the market being and you would no longer have to manufacture it (some corporation reverse engineered the tech and figured out how to make it.). So after a certain point (this should take a while) you might see lasers on the market. And if you never sold heavy laser, but you sold laser rifles, you should eventually see heavy lasers being sold simply because the corporation advanced the technology on there own (though this presents a problem, you can't use it because you haven't researched it. which is retarded. C'mon, if you pick up a gun, even an alien gun, it still works by pulling a trigger. There's no research required. Maybe you have horrible aim, don't know how to compensate for recoil, etc. but that's training, not research.)

[sir_schwick]

Hmm... How about if you sold tech that doesn't require elerium then you'd eventually see it on the market being and you would no longer have to manufacture it (some corporation reverse engineered the tech and figured out how to make it.). So after a certain point (this should take a while) you might see lasers on the market. And if you never sold heavy laser, but you sold laser rifles, you should eventually see heavy lasers being sold simply because the corporation advanced the technology on there own (though this presents a problem, you can't use it because you haven't researched it. which is retarded. C'mon, if you pick up a gun, even an alien gun, it still works by pulling a trigger. There's no research required. Maybe you have horrible aim, don't know how to compensate for recoil, etc. but that's training, not research.)

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Exactly! I imagine that if a corp researched it you would get a training manual to explain how you could fire it.

Step One - Point at alien you want dead
Step Two - Pull Trigger

You could concentrate on alien techs and let Earth corps do all the weapon and laser upgrades, but you give up royalties on weapons sales(lucrative).

[Snakeman]

Its certainly a logical economical progression over the course of what happens in the game's universe. However, as long as it starts out as though everything must splinter off from what X-COM does in the beginning, including any ramifications for their activities, then I feel there's a better marriage between this game's timeline and anything that follows.