Yes, that's why I wanted to rework their stats to compensate that (at least for the sectoid and floater) .
In any case the current step for alien identification is the mind probe and half the TUs of a soldier so it shouldn't be extremely gamebreaking.
Well it will be very useful for the initial terror sites with Sectoids where you can easily identify the Leader who is mind controlling your troops. :)
I really like the Sectoid commander, it looks very stylish.
As for the Floater, I don't think it suits a leader, it's more of an enforcer of some sort.
What would be your approach to the floater leaders?
One thing is that I have problems with the weapons placements (they are 3 pixels lower). This is addressed by shortening the sprite ??? ?
Have you considered that distinguishing the Leaders/Commanders for those races is a big help to the player when he needs to do some captures?
Well there's a canon version:
(https://ninjaw.free.fr/cd32/_UFOCD32/Image4.gif)
;)
I really dig the ones you made though, they deserve some presence.
edit: oh, nevermind, they are genetically engineered species.
Still I think a commander being a communication and control unit makes sense, may be replace the head and add wires and stuff. Or just add a hood to that fancy cape of theirs
In general, I think armour is something that is missing from aliens and would be a nice addition.
I agree with this wholeheartedly. Damn sectoids are running around naked, nobody cared to give them a jump suit or something?
I think it sort of works for sectoids if you think of them as throwaway biological drones. The aliens just mass produce them with clone vats and send them to probe planets/feed them to the meat grinder. When things get rowdier, other species more suited for fighting show up. At least floaters are a little bit armoured.
For a society that has mastered such an energy source as elerium (and presumably can obtain it from somewhere), even building the UFOs can't be that difficult, so "wasting" sectoids+plasma weapons+UFOs is not too big of a deal. The reason they don't swarm the Earth would be logistics: they produce those things far away, not on Mars, and they can only devote so much to Earth because they are in other conflicts too.
It kind of works with the brain being a control node but not the real big boss, and Elerium not being anywhere in the solar system and how they don't win despite the huge technological advantage that they have. When humans destroy the brain, they stop the invasion because the main empire decides we're not worth the trouble for now, not because they can't beat us. Maybe they'll come back later..!
That's an interesting post, Arthanor. I would like to add that while the aliens as a whole indeed have so much more resources available to them - in terms of energy, population and technology - the ones fighting on Earth do not have reliable supply routes and actually are quite short on materials and people. They perhaps mine Mars to a certain degree and must have industrial facilities that are wonderfully efficient, but it's all small scale; Cydonia is a military base, not an industrial centre. That's why their modus operandi is to use whatever is available, like bio-engineered Earth organisms, Sectoids that are easy to clone using Earth biomass, as well as services of human traitors. Their plan is to conquer the planet using human governments, not their own armies, because there's not enough of them. (Though I suppose they could just fusion bomb us, but genocide is clearly not their objective.)
The reduced size of the sprite leave very small window for details without blurring the whole and also I have the feeling it is not very "vainilla" style.
About the alien armours, I was noticing now that the alien enhancement is always from the inside ( I believe mostly to hide the weakness until autopsies). This would explain why the sectoids are naked and feeble as their anatomy seems unable to sustain the trauma surgery as the muton/floater and the others.
Then about the escalating discussion about the greater plot of the x-com: I want to see how continues XD
For now I would like to add that it's not really important if they have a connection to the empire or not; I still think their operation a small scale one, though self-supporting. I think the "aliens are way more numerous than us" message is more about the fact that they can remain safe from Earth armies while being able to strike anywhere, and therefore can never lose.
And there is the "darker side". XCom is bound to have a coterie of sponsors - military, political and financial leaders who threw their lot with supporting the project. These men aren't charity. They also know that with a small fleet of Avengers and a host of alien tech (psionics!) they can control the Earth just as easily as the Aliens. So: get rid of the competition, start world domination (possibly with the US President as a frontman in this new world order). The events of TFTD seem to indicate that the plan succeeded, if only to a point: nation states are mostly gone, but the Earth is still divided into several competing blocs. More importantly, humans in TFTD have an access to very high technology, while their cities remind of run-down Detroit. A sure sign that the technology is elitist and there is a close-knit group in control. If the technology was industrialized and popularized, the cities would look very, very different.
In a nutshell: this is another reason to keep the tech hush-hush.
Excuse me but what X-Com can manufacture under harsh secret base conditions, nation states could do much, much easier actually if the whole thing is fully disclosed... More industrial potential is more industrial potential, period. The main problem I describe is basically this: you say that "teching up" earth armies would take years... Yes indeed... The real problem would be if XCom council allowed them to tech themselves up, without X-Coms supervision :) Take the 2nd world war and how quickly the warring powers were able to go from drawing board to mass production... Of course there is always the danger of the "kill switch" and this is the rationale behind XCom. A rationale that can even justify tyranny, really :)
a) Reverse engineering works because it's on small scale.I may not have explained it right in the first place, but what I meant is not the process itself but the needs to manufacture and equip millions of boots. See my previous reply. I also I doubt its enough to show the shematics to some engineers and they will be able to automatically build something they cant understand. X-com engineers are working in conjuction with the labs and we can assume that when something is been designed in the labs in the research time, the engineers are included on how to.
- Really? You need to reverse-engineer only once, then prepare the tech for mass production (let a bunch of US or Russian engineers at it, they will do it quickly and efficiently). Hand-made goods might be of better quality but lack standarization and are wasteful & expensive.
b) Lore says X-Com is proliferating alien tech freely
- Regardless of out-of-game lore, I consider in-game facts to take precedence. We don't see non-Xcom human-made laser-totting craft engaging UFOs in game. This can be justified by game's simlicity, but... se below
c) Earth got dragged down by "incidental and natural inability of humans to solve their problems".
- Oh yeah, if there indeed was a shadow council keeping the lid on the tech, they'd make sure humans were endlessly fighting against each other. Humans are generally able to prosper when left alone, thank you very much. But struggling and divided people don't start revolutions. If the tech was really shared, lack of elerium nothwithstanding, it's simply too wondrous to justify the lack of a new industrial revolution-type event, when polpulations became, in comparison, basically filthy-rich within the span of a couple generations... Unless somebody made sure no technological revolution took place. It was impossible in XIXth century (despite some tries), but it IS possible with Alien-grade technology. Especially if it didn't leak too much.
d) Post TFTD salvation of mankind
- Some salvation there, if the Earth basically got destroyed... A single city, a single damned city was all that was left standing by the time of Apocalypse (plus, possibly quite numerous, space colonies, but I'd place the total humanity population count at maybe 100-200 million). Indeed, a salvation for a few, but the cost was beyond terrifying...