OpenXcom Forum
OpenXcom => Suggestions => Topic started by: Avalanche on August 09, 2014, 09:20:19 pm
-
If I'm not mistaken (and correct me if I am), building facilities to defend your base is an all or nothing affair. Either you shoot enough missiles to destroy the incoming battleship completely, or you accomplish nothing and still have to deal with all the aliens. This always struck me as rending almost all of the base defenses worthless. In the early game, you're probably not going to be able to afford to put in enough missiles or lasers to actually shoot down an attack, and by late game it's not going to matter because you can flood your bases with tanks/abuse psy powers.
So, to breath some new life into the facilities, would it be possible to tie the amount of aliens which show up in your base with the remaining health of the attacking ship?
Alternatively, if that's not possible, might it be possible to have other kinds of alien craft attack the base? That way there would be a point to at least throwing up some token defenses.
-
I guess you just have to build more defenses? One isnt enough. Neither is two. But three or four is sufficient.
The amount of damage inflicted on a UFO is unlikely to kill its members, unless it crashes and its UFO power source explodes killing all aliens within (as you see in crash landings).
-
Avalanche, there was an option in XComUtil that did exactly what you described.
I liked that option.
-
I agree.Base defense boils down to just 2 fusion defenses and 1 gravity field in each base.
-
I agree.Base defense boils down to just 2 fusion defenses and 1 gravity field in each base.
Exactly; all other defence facilities is just unused and wasted.
-
Not neccessarily; the other school of base defence dictates building 10 or so missile defenses (+ grav shield ofc) since their high cost/efficiency ratio :)
-
Not neccessarily; the other school of base defence dictates building 10 or so missile defenses (+ grav shield ofc) since their high cost/efficiency ratio :)
Fair point, though it only works for those really small bases in Antarctica. :)
-
Not neccesarily that small! 11MDs+1 grav shield is almost impenetrable (12 shots give 50% chance of destroying a battleship, and here you have 22), leaving you with 24 tiles to build; 3 hangars+2xstores+lift+HWD is only 16 tiles :) Also, this is actually an equal to 4 Fusion Ball Def + GS, since merely 2+GS yield only about 60% chance of success.
Having said all that, I strongly support the notion to either:
1. defenses inflict casualties on the crew, killing some, wounding some of the invaders even if the ship gets through;
2. bases being attacked by various ships, thus less-than-total defenses make sense;
3. defenses being able to engage enemy ships on geoscape. While actual combat would be kinda not cool, the defenses could (upon inflicting enough 'hits') force smaller UFOs to break away from their flight pattern, thereby preventing pin-pointing of the base location (and disrupting other missions). The interception range could be about 250 nautical miles (and we could explain the inevitable logical questions away with the notion that AA defences being physically not in the base, but in a wide circle around it).
4. defenses having some extra function, like ex.
- military posturing (extra points per month?)
- morale boost (+% capability of all living quarters?)
- deterrent (defense strength in region relatively decreases the attraction of aliens to that region)
- friction factor (all UFOs within 1000 nm of the base are slowed down, % based on defense strength, rule of diminishing returns in force here)
- defense facilities housing stationary weapons helping in base defense mission proper;
- or something else altogether.
-
You've pretty much summed up all of my ideas perfectly Dioxine, and improved on them quite a bit. I hadn't even thought of giving them extra, unique functions, but that seems like a great idea.
Here's the big question though. Is any of this doable in a practical sense? While it would be awesome if you could do all this with just a few ruleset changes, but I somehow tend to doubt it will be that simple.
-
Avalanche, there was an option in XComUtil that did exactly what you described.
I liked that option.
may we get into next openxcom version? or even beyter jave yge ideas dioxine wrote abiuy abobe :-*
-
Easy . . .
Dont just have Battleships conduct the attack on the base.
Terror Ships are the other offensive weapon the aliens use and they only have a damage capacity of 1200, which means 600 points and they're down.
Thats the low-baller attempt to attack your base for a certain period of time, which missile defenses and laser defenses would be able to handle it (three units of them would give you a decent chance).
It would have no effect on the type or number of personnel that were invading the base.
-
Easy . . .
Dont just have Battleships conduct the attack on the base.
Terror Ships are the other offensive weapon the aliens use and they only have a damage capacity of 1200, which means 600 points and they're down.
Thats the low-baller attempt to attack your base for a certain period of time, which missile defenses and laser defenses would be able to handle it (three units of them would give you a decent chance).
It would have no effect on the type or number of personnel that were invading the base.
Enabling multiple ships for base assaults would be neat, but it'd require externalization from hard code to the ruleset, and besides it's non-vanilla, so it won't happen any time soon...
And besides, there is one technical problem: the assaulting UFO team numbers and their equipment is defined separately from the ship, so even if other ships were introduced, the attackers' composition would be exactly the same. To avoid this, we would have to either make a separate alienDeployments section for every possible ship, or to get rid of the base assault section entirely and use the ship's setup instead.
-
What do you mean by "50% HP and done"? I've never heard of UFO's crashing when 50% damaged... To get a Terror Ship you'd still need 3 hits with Missile/Laser, which means the need of 6+ such facilities (no grav shield that early), or at least 3 and being very, very lucky; That means base defence is impractical even against those supposedly "weak" ships.
-
What do you mean by "50% HP and done"? I've never heard of UFO's crashing when 50% damaged... To get a Terror Ship you'd still need 3 hits with Missile/Laser, which means the need of 6+ such facilities (no grav shield that early), or at least 3 and being very, very lucky; That means base defence is impractical even against those supposedly "weak" ships.
Yes. That's why I'm all for "UFO damage partially kills crew" idea.
-
What do you mean by "50% HP and done"?
It was listed somewhere else in another forum post that it only takes 50% max damage inflicted on an alien ship to bring it down. . . and 100% or greater Destroys the ship (and leaves no crash site).
So for a Battleship that means 1500 damage brings it down, 3000 damage destroys it completely.
The tiny Scout ships only have 50 max damage, so that's why just about any weapon besides the Cannon will usually destroy them without leaving a crash site to explore.
I can see why the vanilla game didn't make a distinction though when it comes to base defense. The ship is hovering right over your base. If you don't Destroy it completely it just gets "Hurt" and has to land anyway, and then the enemy personnel have still been delivered to your base.
-
I think something that should be included is alien ships performing an orbital bombardment. I might even suggest they create a new class of ships which can do this (have the current battleship be reclassified as a battlecruiser and the new ship be the battleship).
Right now, the player either has a grav shield and a few fusion launchers that destroys almost any attacking ship or has a base layout that makes a super chokepiont that the aliens run head long into.
To change this up, have an alien attack force from this new ship that has its aggression level turned down by 1, which should make some of the aliens play only defense. Meanwhile every 5 or 10 turns, the ship performs an orbital attack that destroys everything in a room, possibly the room itself as well. These attacks could either be semi random (no attacks on hangar bays or the access lift) or called down by an alien spotting a human. If you have a single missle launcher, then every 5 or 10 turns, you get another attack on the ship while the base defense is going on
Other minor changes, let the aliens spawn in defense systems since they must be close to the surface.
-
Aliens do not perform bombardment of Earth's surface, all of the lore seems to deny such a notion. Maybe they don't want to destroy a planet they want to conquer; maybe they don't want the Earthlings to retaliate with their nukes and destroy the planet themselves. Maybe they think that wholesome destruction isn't going to win them any political points in Alien Infiltration missions.