ZCOM is an idea that has been mentioned here and there for quite a long time amongst the XCOM community and that I've started considering how a total conversion could work, now that OXC has so many available assets to play with and it is possible to create something without using any of the original units, terrains or weapons
I haven't made my mind if I'll actually go for this, but I thought I'd share what I came up with right now.
IntroductionIt started with isolated reports worldwide of the dead reanimating themselves, which were initially dismissed as medical errors or pranks. But as the days passed, the number of cases started to increase exponentially and the authorities started to enforce quarantines, which were quickly upgraded to martial law as fear and protests ignited riots and other disturbances. As chaos and violence soared so did the number of undead, until the governments realized that their individual efforts were hopeless and that the epidemic was out of control.
It's now a month since the initial cases were reported and the world economy has collapsed due chronic shortages of food, power, transport and other commodities. Millions of refugees have taken to the countryside, hoping to escape the zombie hordes but unwillingly helping to spread the infection. Emergency and the police/military are close to be overwhelmed and in many cases governments don't run their countries anymore since most of their territories have fallen into anarchy.
Realizing the zombie pandemic as a major threat to civilization, 16 countries decided to join their efforts to defeat this menace. A multinational team of soldiers, researchers and engineers was formed, operating out of an isolated base and provided with the latest technology in order to combat, investigate and defeat the zombie threat. This team was called the Zombie Combat Unit.
Geoscape* Countries still pay you money according to your efforts (until they are overrun by zombies, that is)
* Money represents basic supplies (water, food, power, housing, etc.) required for survival
* You can only hire/sack people (plenty of refugees around to recruit, if you can feed and house them) or sell items - you can't buy any weapons, craft, ammo or any other items since there's no economy anymore. Whatever you need you'll need to recover, steal or manufacture it.
* This also applies to new base modules - you'll need to get specialized materials before you can build them or any additional bases.
* Specialized materials will include things like fuel (for craft), processed metal, electronics, heavy machinery, aircraft parts, etc.
* Initial research will require the player to capture 4-6 different types of live zombies. These different types will have a regional dispersion.
* Initial base will have a Skyranger plus 2 Darkstars (in lieu of Interceptors)
Missions* UFOs will be replaced by Recovery missions, where there will be present a target for recovery (warehouse, crates, etc.) instead of an alien craft. Success in the mission will get you specialized materials for building stuff.
* Recovery missions will appear as the green crosses on Geoscape once detected. To detect Recovery missions, the player needs first to research a topic (North America Survey) to locate possible targets, which activates the appearance of the missions on the next month.
* The player can use then a Darkstar drone or Skyranger to locate the 'green crosses' and assault them. Recovery missions will always take place in cities. After some days the Recovery site will disappear as the red dot flying off (someone else got there first).
* Once you complete the research on a specific region (Europe, North Africa, etc.) you'll also activate a monthly zombie terror site on that region.
* Alien Retaliation will be replaced with 'Zombie Horde' assault on ZCOM bases
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