OpenXcom Forum
OpenXcom => Suggestions => Topic started by: Sectoid1985 on February 18, 2016, 09:42:05 pm
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Has anyone every attempted, or thought of switching the game so that you play as the Aliens?
Start with an offworld base equipped with Small and Medium scouts, and you have to scout earth for base locations and hunt out XCOM Bases, each month you can attack one city for a terror attack. As you build bases on earth you get bigger and better craft, and access to new alien races but you still select which race you attack with.
You could have it that your supplied by mars the better you do, the more equipment and materials you get each month rather than money.
I have no idea if this is even possible, but could be a fun switch to the usual game.
Anyone even know how to start?
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Sure someone has: https://www.moddb.com/games/ufo-the-two-sides
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Nice one thanks
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I was going to suggest something similar, but rather than an offworld base, a group of defecting Sectoids (the weakest of the alien races, to keep the challenge up) on Earth bases fighting both the X-Com and Cydonia to break free and claim a planet just for them. It is easier to implement, as it would use already available resources (Alien Bases, on Earth, X-Com crafts and models).
A more complex, although interesting idea, would be to change how the alien invasion would work, you being the general serving a somewhat reluctant alien empire, trying to do your best with your starting limited resources and forces to prove them it would be a great idea to commit to an invasion to Earth. Maybe that would require to ramp up the technological level of X-Com and whatever other earth based factions you would face to give some semblance of a challenge.
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It occurs to me that this is possible, at least to some extent, through modding. You still get stuck with UFO:TTS' staging area approach, no off-world operations for you, but this can be done. And, unfortunately, you can't get your UFOs intercepted. Yet.
Incidentally, has the dust ever settled over TTS? I know it died, but I'm not entirely clear on the details.
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Well, with enough lore re-adaptation, you could make such a game possible, though you could hardly call it an UFO experience through the lenses of the aliens.
Let us work with the idea that we are a bunch of fleeing Sectoids, Hybrids or any similar lowly race with some end game potential (sectoids are, at least, psychics). You are fleeing from the empire, and decide to establish a base of operations on Earth. However, that will not be 1999 X-Com earth. Maybe it will be in the future (say, Apocalypse future) in which X-Com is hardened and well prepared for an alien invasion. Maybe it is in the future in which X-Com failed and humanity is on its way towards uplifting, as in XCom 2.
Regardless, you will start off weak, taking down supply ships and the such to get money and material in to upgrade your base and hopefully build another one (or not, in case of a single base game sounds more interesting for the proposal), all the while the alien empire mostly ignores you, until you become enough of a problem for them to go and knock on your door.
Basically it would be something between Piratez (guerrilla game) and XCom2 (minus base mobility).
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Basically it would be something between Piratez (guerrilla game) and XCom2 (minus base mobility).
XCOM2 is far more guerilla than Piratez :) Maybe you should play as alien forward force? You establish bases and carry out operations against local population. You need science (engineering?) and manufacturing since you've arrived in a small craft, and need to build up your potential. Your ships don't get intercepted because you have superior cloaking and speed (especially if the mission is set in Earth's past). Sectoids are a good choice I think.
However majority of your attacks would be ground attacks and as it is, it takes tons and tons of ruleset coding to force the game to support such mission structure in any sensible way. Also there is no option for bombardment :)
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Cue why I advocate for doing this in the future, taking down supply and transport ships and the such, bending the game more towards Piratez. Or you could just do that while the other aliens are invading earth, effectively allowing you to play the good old X-Com game with slightly different rules.
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Cue why I advocate for doing this in the future, taking down supply and transport ships and the such, bending the game more towards Piratez. Or you could just do that while the other aliens are invading earth, effectively allowing you to play the good old X-Com game with slightly different rules.
Probably not what you've envisaged, but you can as well make a mod for Piratez that changes your soldiers into Sectoids. Well, the equipment, descriptions and some tech tree parts would have to be changed. :)
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And there is even already a faction of "feral sectoids" in XPiratez canon!
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I feel like Piratez might have too much of a post apocalyptic vibe for what I had in mind but, can't deny, it is a pretty good idea and most of the work is already done.
Just gonna need how to mod first. That's the first thing to do.
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Don't worry, it's probably the easiest game to mod I've ever seen. ;)
Still a lot of work, though. I suggest you start with something small, like a new weapon.
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How about Apoc Aliens vs Sectoids? You can't all-out invade because your fleshy puppets don't last long in Earth's alien atmosphere. You have to infect nations, corporations, factions etc with Micronoids, but these damn grey jumpsuits and aliens both keep showing up and killing your guys with bullets and plasma.
Earth is not big enough for two alien dominators.
Would prob need new mechanics to handle micronoid infection right tho - Pandemic meets X-COM?
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How about Apoc Aliens vs Sectoids? You can't all-out invade because your fleshy puppets don't last long in Earth's alien atmosphere. You have to infect nations, corporations, factions etc with Micronoids, but these damn grey jumpsuits and aliens both keep showing up and killing your guys with bullets and plasma.
Earth is not big enough for two alien dominators.
Would prob need new mechanics to handle micronoid infection right tho - Pandemic meets X-COM?
That's actually an interesting idea. It made me think of a similar one: you are the Sectoids, but you work for the Micronoid empire. Well not wilfully, of course; you are a pariah caste, and they only tolerate you because you can survive on Earth.
So you are sent to Earth to conquer it or something, and you are closely supervised to ensure your loyalty and eagerness. And you do as you are told, but at some point also start thinking about turning against your masters...
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That works too.
Either way I think that to make aliens work you have to consider what makes then work and tick. So:
Resources:
- Elerium: Power Source for everything we see the aliens use (wouldn't surprise me if Cydonia uses fusion reactors or so, tho. Hydrogen is cheap, Elerium is expensive). This would be the main resource, the equivalent is money for X-COM. Actually maybe more important - X-COM can get money elsewhere, the Sectoids only get Elerium from out of the solar system - mining in The Frontier?
Elerium could come from the wider empire/superiors, which has to be kept happy and convinced the Earth infiltration plan works. Or they cut your supply and you have to use crap guns and fusion power plants.
Nutrients - The clone armies need to be fed. Sure, aliens can and should build hydroponics and vats and such, but there's a planet full of biomass close by, so...
DNA - Needed for bio-research and making/enhancing units?
Money could be a resource too - for dealing with humans and human agents. Maybe Sectoids pay people in gold? Otherwise I don't see what stops them from creating digital money somehow.
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Another thing: One must wonder if human as aliens doens't get cheesy fast because you're killing humans left and right with heavy plasma and Ethereals.
I think the way to do would be to limit aliens to using the good guns in small ammounts - You can't produce early on because your superiors are wary of humans or other aliens stealing it early on, so you jave to use stuff like alien lasers or pay through the noose in elerium to send in the good guns.
To limiy species, you need research and DNA in order to adapt them to Earth's enviroment.
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Geez, this is something I have always wanted since I really got into X-Com back on my first UFO playthrough all those years ago. I'd kill for a full game from the alien's perspective.
I always thought TFTD would be the best candidate for it as the alien forces in the game have a position somewhat more similar to X-COM when compared to the first game. They have a single earthly starting "base" in their city of T'leth, as opposed to starting on Mars in the first game. T'leth is also ancient and being reawakened, something you could easily translate into a pacing mechanic for alien development. Say instead of building new facilities, the aliens "reactivate" dormant but already existing facilities in T'leth, with different facilities requiring different resources gathered from flying sub missions to be completed, but also granting new subs/tech/aliens as they are brought back online. The aliens win by reactivating the ultimate alien cryo chamber, X-COM wins by preventing it and conducting a successful attack on T'leth
Those are my two cents at any rate
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I always thought TFTD would be the best candidate for it as the alien forces in the game have a position somewhat more similar to X-COM when compared to the first game. They have a single earthly starting "base" in their city of T'leth, as opposed to starting on Mars in the first game. T'leth is also ancient and being reawakened, something you could easily translate into a pacing mechanic for alien development. Say instead of building new facilities, the aliens "reactivate" dormant but already existing facilities in T'leth, with different facilities requiring different resources gathered from flying sub missions to be completed, but also granting new subs/tech/aliens as they are brought back online. The aliens win by reactivating the ultimate alien cryo chamber, X-COM wins by preventing it and conducting a successful attack on T'leth
Great idea!
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This sounds great indeed, but requires making a lot of small-sized terrains for ship / coast attacks. Because battles that you initiate will be in plain air, except in the rare cases where you shoot down a XCOM ship.
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This sounds great indeed, but requires making a lot of small-sized terrains for ship / coast attacks. Because battles that you initiate will be in plain air, except in the rare cases where you shoot down a XCOM ship.
I imagine there would be a fair number of downed flying sub defenses as well. Or defending your subs that have landed to perform a mission.
I could see defending crashed flying subs/UFOs, especially early on, as a way to attempt to stall X-COM research progress. They can't research what they don't recover.
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Damnit I had a nice reply typed up to you guys but I lost it. GRRRRRRRR
Just some (mostly human) enemy suggestions for prospective alien plays, I will try to re-create the detail again later:
- Locals (badly-armed, numerous civvies, to fight in Harvest and Research, angry civvies in terror missions, etc)
- Inquisitors (crazy anti-alien cultists, want to destroy aliens and their tech)
- Men in Blue (police forces and investigators - noisey Mulder and Scully types - working for X-COM/Governments. A bit weak on weapons, but good on numbers. Eventually go full SWAT because screw you. Also, their "terror" unit could be Attack Dogs!)
- Military (soldier types, complete with tanks, jeeps, the works. Militaries of nations. Lags one tier of weapons behind X-COM)
- Gray Ops (mercs working for unscrupulous corporations, power-mongers, shadowy manipulators, ruthless dictators - EXALTish types - who want to steal the alien tech to become rich/powerful. Had an idea that they could use primitive cyborgs or something unscrupulous)
- Rebel Hybrids (human-sectoid hybrids who rebelled against alien overlords using a mix of alien and human weapons, and psi. Want to overthrown the Sectoids but don't trust pure humans not to kill them. Could be the Alien game's equivalent of Ethereals)
- Enforcer Androids (Enforcer Androids created by X-COM's Professor Able Standard. In this timeline, Enforcer program was not cancelled and sorta the ancestor of Apocalypse's Androids. Tough, strong, no psionic abilities but invulnerable to psi as well. X-COM's mutons, so to say. There's a mod somewhere that adds Enforcers to Open X-COM - https://www.openxcom.com/mod/x-com-enforcer)
I'm not sure how X-COM itself would deploy. Of course, it should be the strongest force, and constantly evolve. One cool idea would be to get a lot of X-COM vets and have them create "deployment mixes" - think of different numbers of differently-ranked troops with a diverse mix of weapons, strategy and AI. It would be especially interesting if X-COM had access not only to vanilla but the new weapons modded by the community that are often seen in mods - shotgun, assault rifle, flamer, sniper rifle, grenade launcher, etc.
If you're doing something that has the aliens fight other aliens as well (Rebel Aliens/Aliens vassals of Micronoids/TFTD Aliens vs UFO aliens), then it gets easier, but I tried to do my best in thinking. Could even add Apoc aliens if you feel like it.
There's also the issue of ships and alien missions, but I will talk about it later.
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Some thoughts I've cultivating about the whole Sectoids vs Micronoids idea:
- Lorewise, this could happen before the supernova that destroys the Micronoids' world. Humans stay ignorant of the whole affair, Sectoids with their superior tech find out, they fight. They use a different technology from Dimensional Gates (or the gates are somewhere humans can't see). Your alien group is tasked with investigating and then fighting this new threat.
- How would Disruptors be in OG X-COM mechanics? I'm thinking that rather than making them another "more power" energy weapon, make them like people often use them in RT: They're a low power, rapid-fire, unlimited ammo weapon. Think more like conventional guns or lasers rather than plasma. Maybe give them a armor-eroding effect to prevent heavy armor from simply tanking it all, and make early-game armor and stuff more vulnerable to Disruptors. They're not a improvement, they're a different sort of weapon.
- Dimension Missiles: Just MOAR POWER? One idea I had is that its literally a DIMENSION missile - As in, Blaster Launchers are teleguided, Dimension Missiles phase or teleport through things. Similar, but different.
- Forcefields = Huge HP? I'm thinking late-game Anthropods with more HP than a Cyberdisk here. A separate HP pool independent from normal HP would really rock.
- Teleportation and Invisibility could be clever tools, especially if you're unable to reverse-engineer them (maybe its dependent upon the aliens' dimensional tech).
- Entropy Launchers: Armor-eroding and damage only? Any way to mimmick their cool effect?
Enemy races? Going by UFO it would be Humanoid-ish enemy with guns + Terror unit with exotic ability. So Anthropods and Skeletoids?
Maybe subvert that somewhat - say, Brainsuckers as both a stand-alone race (alongside human thralls and Popper terror unit?) and attack? Would Megaspawns be better a race in themselves or a Terror Unit? Multi and Hyperworms?