More than 1 UFO per battlescape

[grrussel]

Its fun to have more than 1 UFO per battlescape - this small patch hardcodes it to 4 UFOs ;-)

Attached for fun or future interest, if any.

[luke83]

I actually requested something along these lines within this thread
https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php/topic,354.0.html

So how do i test this , do i need to compile the code myself as that counts me out ( i dont know how)

[grrussel]

Yes, this would need you to patch and build the OpenXcom source code.

[Fenyő]

That might be a good idea to have this feature in some rare cases in official OpenXcom.
For example when an Alien Base is being constructed. In original X-Com, the aliens have several UFOs on Earth when an Alien Base is being constructed. Usually 1 or 2 Supply ship and 1 or 2 Battleship, and they land on different places. I think sometimes they could land on the SAME exact location, and when we are ground-assaulting them, we would have all the UFOs on that location in a single Battlescape.
What do you think?

And of course this "feature" could be disabled from options.cfg. (to assure we can still choose the original way of the game)

[Volutar]

how it's possible to fit 2 battleships?

[kkmic]

Larger battlescape maps. They are modular, anyway, so in theory could be extended to a larger size pretty easily.

[Volutar]

in theory - yes, but how long will battle happen if you got to clean up 2 battleships? i bet 2 times more than 1. and even 1 is quite long
so, i think it is possible but it will be not very interest-friendly.

[kkmic]

Indeed, larger maps = longer and slower games.

However, if these types of battles are used as some kind of special 'events', then they might be fun...

[Volutar]

As special events, like 10x10x4 maps, or 6x6x10 (10 levels, yay)... probably would be fun. As exception

[SupSuper]

It could be interesting as a parameter you can set up in a ruleset or New Battle screen or whatever just for fun, so players need to explicitly change it to get it.

[pmprog]

Put it in the Single Battle mode 

[Daiky]

If I would want an epic size battle, I would rather love to see some sort of giant size alien mother ship/floating alien base : it appears as alien base on the geoscape, but you land your skyranger next to "it" and as you start revealing the map you see the walls of something so big you've never seen before :p
If you get that one cleaned out, the reward will be big

Other than that, it sounds boring heaving to clean 2 ufo's in a single battle.

[grrussel]

I always wondered how the UFOs disappeared from the geoscape after getting shot down; presumably, another UFO can come and fix it ;-)

Larger maps do equal longer, slower games: I am happily ignoring the long campaign based traditional XCOM game in favour of just the battles ;-)
The best XCOM/TFTD versions (imho) were the demo disks for PC - no geoscape, just 1 battle with a random (well, preselected, but pretty mixed) selection of equipment against a terror mission/ UFO of some sort.

The large maps of TFTD did mean it can be irritating to find that last hidden Alien - one aspect of TFTD I can live without.

The plus side, however, is a more immersive battle. Terror missions have a feel of being in a large city; tactics need to change (cannot cynically exploit "edge of battlescape" for flank security, nor form "one big line, sweep left to right"). It means Aliens can flank; need to keep looking back, too. It becomes more important to bring enough ammo - no more flatten everything, as that exhausts ammo. It forces you to storm, or avoid, farm houses / buildings. It also stops the old, and now a bit boring approach, of sweep clean the surroundings and then storm the UFO - on a sufficiently large map, you cannot clean out all the aliens so easily. It makes using blaster bombs fun, too; lots to shoot...

There are some other nice aspects too: need to send out lone scouts, try and find UFO(s) or aliens; avoid conflict until you can get sufficient strength of numbers to make it practical. It means it could be possible to get cut off from your transport - no guarantee of easy retreat. It also opens up the possibility of unwinnable missions - where there are simply too many aliens to kill them all, but you could still steal new alien tech / capture aliens / destroy some artefact even without needing to kill all the aliens. Of course, you need to get back to the evacuation zone... I also found alien bases to be a bit sparsely populated. Much more scary if there are 50+ in there!

Finally, a long mission is a good chance to dynamically alter lighting - a day / night cycle. Night falls.. and the aliens come for you!