Research and manufacture options

[Man in the Funny Hat]

Had a couple of ideas.  One would be to be able to assign engineers to base construction projects in order to speed up their completion.  Struck me as a bit odd that they can build a spacecraft to carry 20-odd people to Mars but can't/won't pick up a drill to help assemble shelves for a new storage block.

Once a player has actually completed the research tree something should happen.  Maybe just a pop-up to let the player know that all possible research is complete so it'd be best to just sack all your scientists and destroy all the labs, if not just inform the player and then do that FOR them.  Though base construction would make removing labs problematic if destruction of a lab totally isolates another section players should not be "duped" into continuing to pay salaries to scientists who can't actually do anything.  Another possibility is to allow those scientists to still research SOMEthing.  I was thinking of options along the lines of making weapons lighter, use less elerium, build a little faster.  However, it occurs to me that the only way to do that would likely be to add a whole new set of weapons with the new stats.  Maybe they could spend their time forevermore growing 10-unit batches of elerium?

[Juju Dredd]

I agree, once last research is done scientist are useless. It's not often a problem to me since I wait this moment to send my commando to Cydonia. I have think of another way to use scientists: they could work to transplant cybernetic modules on soldiers. Each soldier could have only one and the effect could diverse depending on the implant chosen (psionic immunity - see in the dark - never lose morale - insensitive to pain - never take injury). Transplanting could work just as manufacturing but would take place in the laboratories and occupy scientists.

[Man in the Funny Hat]

Another possibility is that once a player has completed all possible research and DOESN'T then attempt to hit Cydonia within a certain time frame (according to difficulty level?) then alien attacks upon Earth and Xcom bases will continually increase in frequency and difficulty.  If you've completed the research tree then at most you need a bit of time to find and train up psi troops and to build ONE Avenger.  Maybe 1 month, after which penalties for scoring purposes will increase, awards for any accomplishment will decrease, size of UFO's to intercept starts scaling up and you no longer even see Very Small or Small UFO scout missions, infiltration missions increase, etc.  In short, you get 1 month grace period before the game starts sliding into INEVITABLE defeat short of cutting off the head at Cydonia.

[hstech]

Another possibility is that once a player has completed all possible research and DOESN'T then attempt to hit Cydonia within a certain time frame (according to difficulty level?) then alien attacks upon Earth and Xcom bases will continually increase in frequency and difficulty.  If you've completed the research tree then at most you need a bit of time to find and train up psi troops and to build ONE Avenger.  Maybe 1 month, after which penalties for scoring purposes will increase, awards for any accomplishment will decrease, size of UFO's to intercept starts scaling up and you no longer even see Very Small or Small UFO scout missions, infiltration missions increase, etc.  In short, you get 1 month grace period before the game starts sliding into INEVITABLE defeat short of cutting off the head at Cydonia.

This would be easy to avoid: the player would simply keep a couple of less important research topics (Alien Entertainment, Alien Food etc) unresearched until they decide they had enough of the aliens and go to Cydonia to hit them.

Additionally, with Psi active and ready this would not work very well against the player. The Psi allows riskless assault of any ufo with any race.

How about this?

If the player captures a high ranking alien and then interrogate him, he would obtain information about some alien mission going to happen in 2-3 months? Then he could get prepared for them to come.

[kharille]

Getting a schedule would be nice...  wonder if it was randomly generated...