Skyranger placement is insane

[Geronimo]

<vent>
I know, this is classic x-com. But who the hell would put the Skyranger down in between buildings and the alien spacecraft? Why the hell would you do that?

The real reason, of course, is that the game designers wanted to put you in a more difficult position. But it's unbelievable.

I find myself tired of the whole "guys who can't shoot put on impossible missions" theme. There are many good parts to this game, but that isn't one of them. It just makes me want to play a better game, that knows how to make gameplay interesting in other ways.
</vent>

[Solarius Scorch]

I know, this is classic x-com. But who the hell would put the Skyranger down in between buildings and the alien spacecraft? Why the hell would you do that?

To show off your landing skills, I presume.

The real reason, of course, is that the game designers wanted to put you in a more difficult position. But it's unbelievable.

No, it's because of:

Code: [Select]

    commands:
    - type: addUFO
    - type: addCraft
    - type: addBlock
      size: 2
      executions: 2
    - type: fillArea

And it's quite believable.

I find myself tired of the whole "guys who can't shoot put on impossible missions" theme. There are many good parts to this game, but that isn't one of them. It just makes me want to play a better game, that knows how to make gameplay interesting in other ways.

The Skyranger is infamous for being a coffin. If you don't like it, swap it for something else as soon as you can.

[iodsnips]

If I was flying a skyranger, I would land on top of the conveniently flat rooftops of the UFO's!

Keep all those non-flight capable terror units away from our crew as we're exiting our craft!  Well the cyberdisc can fly but that's all.  In my nightmares, the Chryssalid climb ontop of one another to climb heights to get that Zombie bite!

It would have been creepy if aliens had the chance to occasionally spawned ontop of our craft.  As you poke your head out looking around, you witness a curious creature trying to enter your craft from above!

[Solarius Scorch]

If I was flying a skyranger, I would land on top of the conveniently flat rooftops of the UFO's!

"Landing successful! Strike team, proceed to stage 2!"
"Uh, sir? How do we get down from here?"

[Geronimo]

No, it's because of:

Code: [Select]

    commands:
    - type: addUFO
    - type: addCraft
    - type: addBlock
      size: 2
      executions: 2
    - type: fillArea

And it's quite believable.

It's not; it makes no in-game, meta-fictional sense. Humans wouldn't do that.

[Solarius Scorch]

It's not; it makes no in-game, meta-fictional sense. Humans wouldn't do that.

But that's not the topic. You said: "The real reason, of course, is that the game designers wanted to put you in a more difficult position." I pointed out that it is incorrect, and wouldn't be trivial to change.

[Geronimo]

Well, maybe you thought that's what your post communicated. It didn't communicate any such thing to me. I don't even understand what it is intended to show.

But even if "code" (speaking loosely) showed the difficulty came from another mechanism, how would that demonstrate that the design intent wasn't for those situations to be crazy difficult? I don't really follow your reasoning.

[Juku121]

The post was meant to show that the placement is random. The design intent was to provide varied situations, not difficulty in and of itself. Some positions are more difficult (a battleship at the ramp), some are easier (ramp against a map corner). The code snippet communicates this well enough if you know what the commands do.

I don't think the map design went out of its way to provide map blocks that would specifically fit together in an especially difficult way. Heck, landing between the UFO and a building isn't the worst thing ever. Staring down at a Terror Ship on turn 1 with a bunch of Cyberdisks looking down the ramp, now that's crazy difficult.

You can interpret 'some maps should be more difficult than others' as 'we will make this random map crazy difficult' if you wish, but that's certainly not a natural conclusion.

[Geronimo]

If I load a d20 to favor rolls of 1-4, it might still be "random", but the attack rolls would be kind of tough. Similarly, if the designer puts in a bunch of tough scenarios (that seem unlikely -- why would the pilot put down in a position potentially surrounded by aliens?), randomly selecting between them does not demonstrate the innocence of the design.

I get that it's the kind of game they wanted, but every time I see the skyranger in such a situation, the implausible nature of the scenario irritates me. After 30 years, I get that it's just a flaw of the game.

[Juku121]

But that's not the case. You can see the 'd20' yourself, and it's not loaded. Right now, it's just like one of these people who roll three natural ones in a row and start ranting how it's 'totally impossible'.

One can headcanon all sorts of things in X-Com, especially since the entire premise (light infantry vs invaders with spaceships) is entirely implausible without some serious SoD. Perhaps the Skyranger was hit by alien AA fire, lost an engine and between the UFO and the barn was the best the pilot could do short of totally crashing? Maybe he's an alien sympathiser? A hybrid infiltrator? Maybe the UFO has medium-range holographic camouflage? Maybe X-Com hires the cheapest pilots they can find? Maybe it's an AI pilot and this was mistakenly a training run? Etc.

All it comes down to is whether it makes for interesting gameplay, and it does. You could also complain about the fog of war, since it's quite unbelievable that X-Com has no maps, no cameras on the aircraft, and the soldiers never look out of the windows. But it's more fun to play with fog of war and uncover the map together with the enemies, as exemplified by countless tactical games.

Now, if you're really bothered, you can learn (minimal) map making and change the maps and map scripts so that there's a bigger buffer zone around the Skyranger (and other X-Com craft). But this probably has other downsides, since nobody has done something like that as far as I know, and there's been quite a bit of very sophisticated modding going on for years.

[iodsnips]

The sounds of nervous soldier passengers could be heard as the skyranger craft began to shake violently as it was flying in a curious fashion.  The crew could hear the screams of their pilot as the large alien vessel approached quickly from the side.  Suddenly the pilot stopped screaming, and immediately both the skyranger & large alien craft began their decent in parallel, making identical micro maneuvers as if both crafts were being piloted by the same individual.  After the skyranger lands, a blank look from the pilot can be seen as he points towards the alien craft & mumbles "Take me to your leader!"

Never fly too close to a large sectoid ship or any ethereal! Perhaps we never chose to land our crafts where we find them half the time.  Choice is an illusion!