[Answered] Deployment ease

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

Not sure if this is a suggestion or a question or a discussion.

Initial deployment seems to be the riskiest part of the mission. Only one or two units can shoot out of the door, smoke is not there yet, flares are not there yet, and the rest of the team cannot support only two front units taking all hellfire on themselves.

When player is lucky is it pretty easy. However, when two three Xarquids are hovering against transport door it is a pure nightmare. Player easily can lose half of the squad easily not even getting soldiers out of the belly of the transport.

My point is that this part is least tactical. Player don't have option to maneuver how they like or apply they own tactical style. It is just: get the hell out of the transport and then assume a formation.

Would it be nice to give both human and aliens couple of turns to prepare? I am not sure how to do it, though.
Some wild thoughts:
- Place aliens not closer than N tiles from transport.
- Strip aliens from TU on turn one so they at least don't reaction shoot.
- Place smoke around the transport at land site immediately at landing.

[Meridian]

Initial deployment seems to be the riskiest part of the mission. Only one or two units can shoot out of the door, smoke is not there yet, flares are not there yet, and the rest of the team cannot support only two front units taking all hellfire on themselves.

That's literally why all the "That's xcom, baby!" memes exist.
It defines xcom

Some wild thoughts:
- Place aliens not closer than N tiles from transport.
- Strip aliens from TU on turn one so they at least don't reaction shoot.
- Place smoke around the transport at land site immediately at landing.

All three are already possible.

Not 100% sure about the last one, but if not possible, it can easily be implemented.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

Neat! Didn't know this is already implemented. Would you mind pointing me to the right description? I don't see anything like that in ruleset.
For smoke I can help with implementation if needed or leave it to you.

[Meridian]

1/ can be done by mapmaking (making bigger landing zones without alien spawn points), potentially combining it with some clever map scripts

2/ I think Starving Poet has such a mod on the mod portal?

3/ Pre-primed smoke grenades in the map block definition going boom before battle starts... similar to how extra units are spawned today e.g. in 40k mod... if it doesn't work for smokes, it can be added

[Juku121]

2/ I think Starving Poet has such a mod on the mod portal?

Not sure about the mod portal, but it's here on the forum.

Edit: On the portal, too.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

Hmm, I would like to avoid careful map modification and make it a generic thing transferrable between mods. Probably would be in the engine (with option switch, of course).

[Meridian]

3/ Pre-primed smoke grenades in the map block definition going boom before battle starts... similar to how extra units are spawned today e.g. in 40k mod... if it doesn't work for smokes, it can be added

Pre-primed items cannot explode before battle, yet, only after first turn... as example, look at STR_WHITEWORM craft in Piratez, which deploys some poison grenades around the craft.