Altering the Research Tree: Bigger, Badder, and More Explosive!

[OmniscientQ]

Years ago, I was sitting bored at a crappy job, and thinking about X-COM while some customer with an unimportant complaint droned on and on about how horrible a person I was. Specifically, I was thinking about the research tree, and all the various ways I would change it, if I could.

Now, OpenXcom is here! Finally, I can make my dreams a reality!

Of course, I had many of the same ideas as everyone else. Improved "alien alloy" rifles and cannons. Night vision goggles. I even wanted to redo the way grenades worked, by separating the detonator from the payload. Then, the motion scanner technology would lead to a motion sensor detonator. Motion-detonator + regular grenade = proximity grenade! Proximity detonator + stun bomb = stun mines! I thought about making Blaster Bombs and Stun Bombs interchangeable ammos. Blaster launchers that can shoot stun bombs around corners! Small launchers that can fire blaster bombs, but only in direct line-of-sight! (Though, the small launcher would have the inherent danger of inaccuracies...). I wanted to make it so that simply researching plasma weapons would let you use, but not manufacture, the alien weapons. In order to manufacture them, or research new weapons based on alien principles, you would first need the Plasma Weapon Theory project... Maybe a new helmet inventory slot that could hold a mind shield device. That way, psionically weak soldiers don't automatically lose half their number to a single sectoid leader, much less an entire ship of ethereals!

So. Now I can make all of those things happen. But as I look back, I find myself wondering what I could add that would be meaningful, rather than just "power creep". For example, I wanted to make a new class of weapons, a hybrid of terran and alien technologies. I didn't like the idea that X-COM was unable to out-guess the aliens, to innovate. I wanted X-COM to get creative. Alien-alloy rifles, for example. Using the alien technology in unexpected ways. Unfortunately, the alien tech already seems to have most of the bases covered. They have improved rocket launchers, long-range stunners, and the best direct-fire weapons available. Anything new would really just be redundant, and probably overpowered. Do I really need a gun stronger than a heavy plasma? Am I really going to claim with a straight face that heavy plasma isn't deadly enough? That I need more firepower, because the conflict isn't one-sided enough already? I suppose an argument could be made for having an arms race. Add new terran guns and hybrid weapon classes, and then the aliens can adapt and start making better weapons too. Would that be fun, though? Or would it just be the same old thing with slightly larger numbers in the inventory window?

Bleh. I started this post intending to share all these "cool" ideas I had way back when, but over the last 20 years, I've played tons of games that have ten different guns that all try to fill the same role, or that have five different tiers of guns, each more deadly than the last. As I pulled up my old text file and reviewed its contents, I didn't ask myself "What else would cool and awesome?" Instead, I'm asking "What does this add that wasn't there before?"

This morning, I was so excited about the prospect of modding, but something's gone horribly wrong along the way. So, my fellow X-COM fans... What's missing?

[Daiky]

Welcome to openxcom, about that sitting at a crappy job, sounds like me when I started developing the battlescape for openxcom

I understand your dilemma. At first it sounds fun to add stuff, just "because you can". But if you take a closer look to gameplay and game balance, it becomes harder. Because the game already has been balanced once. And they must have done a good job, because the game was rather... good.

I don't know why you think of adding things that they automatically have to be stronger or more powerful? You can add weapons that fill in gaps. Or alternatives that have other strengths at some points, but are weaker in other points. So there are more options to choose from, depending on your strategy?

[Align]

What kind of gaps are there to fill in, though? You already get the most powerful infantry weapon in the game in the first month, so researching laser weapons is more for the utility of infinite ammo and such rather than part of a steady advance towards more power.

[54x]

What kind of gaps are there to fill in, though? You already get the most powerful infantry weapon in the game in the first month, so researching laser weapons is more for the utility of infinite ammo and such rather than part of a steady advance towards more power.

One thing you can do is nerf the heavy plasma, which is simultaneously the hands-down best nonexplosive weapon and the best thing to manufacture for sale. Once that thing is a bit more reasonable there might be room for other guns.

[OmniscientQ]

I don't know why you think of adding things that they automatically have to be stronger or more powerful? You can add weapons that fill in gaps. Or alternatives that have other strengths at some points, but are weaker in other points. So there are more options to choose from, depending on your strategy?

Well, the short answer is... If it's not better, why use it? If I have a cool idea for some hybrid alien/human tech gun, then in order for it to be useful, it has to be better than the Heavy Plasma in some way. If it isn't better, then I'll just use the Heavy Plasma instead. There's room, of course, for intermediate grades of weapons, but the laser class already fills in the space between starting terran technology and the alien plasma weapons. Hence my question of "What's missing?" Obviously, the answer isn't just "We need bigger guns!" Maybe the problem, as suggested above, is that the plasma weapons as a whole need to be nerfed a bit in order to make room for new innovations. The Heavy Plasma is already a top-notch sniper weapon on top of being a fine auto-firing weapon for front-line grunts. If the ability to make aimed shots were removed or nerfed from the plasma weapons (Dunno what kind of justification I would find for that limitation, but...), then that opens up the possibility for some dedicated high-tech sniper rifle, or a series of them.

Actually, when I say that out loud... type it out loud... whichever. Anyway, the model that starts to emerge in my head looks a lot like the tech tree in UFOAI. The UFOAI tech setup has some issues of its own, I'll grant, but there's nothing wrong with having options. Maybe a ruleset that recreates the UFOAI tech progression would be worthwhile.

[Daiky]

Be ware that nerfing the heavy plasma will make aliens weaker. Making heavy plasma harder to manufacture is also not a solution because at some point a lot of aliens drop heavy plasma. Changing the equipment of aliens make them weaker again.

I think that system of aliens dropping their actual equipment is making balancing harder. You see a lot of games where a unit killed doesn't  drop it actual equipment... it's part of the game balance, the whining of it not being realistic stops once people see how much more interesting the game becomes.

If you take JA2 1.13 for example, they implemented a parameter "loot all", if you turn this off, killed units don't drop all their equipment anymore, sometimes just a clip or nothing at all. This fixes the problem of people ending up with large quantities of high-end weapons, eliminating the choice of weapon.

Perhaps we need such a parameter as well to balance things?

[Yankes]

Arms race can be another solution, this will require new aliens subspecies that are harder and new weapons.

[mercy]

How about some XCOM battle drones = spider bots? Like the ones in the movie  Runaway (1984)
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088024/

That film had intelligent mini-rockets - able to turn around corners - chasing targeted humans. Its spider (ro)bots were really awesome.

Create a new shooting effect in OpenXCOM akin Enemy Unknowns Drones that can shoot lightning strikes, electricity arcs?
https://xcom.wikia.com/wiki/Drone

Then we could create aliens from the original concept arts - recently posted by Julian Gollop - aliens who do have extended melee by being able to shoot electric sparks at short distance.

It would be awesome if you could create voxel-arc of electricity spitting some tiny sparks on impact, not just the usual small sprite bullet traveling to its destination.

[Saklie]

Something that always bugged me is that the Heavy Plasma weights the same as the Plasma Rifle and it's just a upgraded version of plasma rifle. And that ALL the aliens will only use this. Maybe you can fix it by making it heavier and not let all the aliens use it? Plus some modification with the necessary TU to fire it?

[SupSuper]

Be ware that nerfing the heavy plasma will make aliens weaker. Making heavy plasma harder to manufacture is also not a solution because at some point a lot of aliens drop heavy plasma. Changing the equipment of aliens make them weaker again.

I think that system of aliens dropping their actual equipment is making balancing harder. You see a lot of games where a unit killed doesn't  drop it actual equipment... it's part of the game balance, the whining of it not being realistic stops once people see how much more interesting the game becomes.

If you take JA2 1.13 for example, they implemented a parameter "loot all", if you turn this off, killed units don't drop all their equipment anymore, sometimes just a clip or nothing at all. This fixes the problem of people ending up with large quantities of high-end weapons, eliminating the choice of weapon.

Perhaps we need such a parameter as well to balance things?

XCOM: Enemy Unknown got around this by making aliens only drop their weapons intact when captured alive, which made getting "massive" quantities of high-end weapons a lot harder while keeping the danger of the aliens using them.

[SHADO]

I had an idea: humans can't use alien weapons without modifications.  This is even after the weapon has been researched.

Recovered alien weapons need to be taken back to X-Com engineers for mods.  Like any manufacturing project, this will take engineers, time, money and possibly materials.  All this, of course, will be less than manufacturing one from scratch.  In terms of resale value, I picture that un-modded weapons will be worth a fraction of modded ones.

This basically restricts X-Com use of things like the heavy plasma while creating a whole new class of weapons.  These human-adapted weapons can then be buffed/nerfed accordingly.

Something that always bugged me is that the Heavy Plasma weights the same as the Plasma Rifle...

The heavy plasma weighs 11; the plasma rifle weighs 8 (both loaded).

[Daiky]

XCOM: Enemy Unknown got around this by making aliens only drop their weapons intact when captured alive, which made getting "massive" quantities of high-end weapons a lot harder while keeping the danger of the aliens using them.

And as interesting side-effect, you'll have to capture the alien to research the weapon in the first place....

in UnitDieBState::convertUnitToCorpse()
change this line:
   https:// move inventory from unit to the ground for non-large units
   if (size == 0)
to this:
   https:// move inventory from unit to the ground for non-large units
   if (size == 0 && (_unit->getType() == "SOLDIER" || _unit->getStatus() == STATUS_UNCONSCIOUS))

[Yankes]

I had an idea: humans can't use alien weapons without modifications.  This is even after the weapon has been researched.

It could be even require couple alien weapons to made one for humans because of low knowledge and lack of skill (like as in "district 9").

[Align]

Alien plasma tech being outright unusable sounds interesting. Why research it then, though? If it just enables the research of some hybrid weapon or such, won't that be the same as now, just with a bit more of a delay before getting the ultimate weapon?

Unless you want to do something like Laser tier X research & Plasma tier X research enables hybrid Hybrid Weapon tier X. Then it'd at least force researching Laser weapons first... though that would make tech progression linear instead of mostly free-form dependent on mission loot.

[xracer]

Create a new shooting effect in OpenXCOM akin Enemy Unknowns Drones that can shoot lightning strikes, electricity arcs?

is called electrolaser, is a directed energy weapons, the method uses lasers to form an electrically conductive laser-induced plasma channel, the same way lighting works, is rather hard to control but looks awesome and when it strikes, it really mean lighting hit you and i also think it is a great idea for weapons variety

maybe i should put here my ideas about weapons