Author Topic: Continue playing after the Council tries to shut you down  (Read 9529 times)

Offline Mr. Quiet

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Continue playing after the Council tries to shut you down
« on: September 12, 2013, 08:27:12 am »
I was reading one of Kaki's posts and it hit me hard, it hurt.

You know those weird scenarios when you're over a million in debt, the counsel begins the process of shutting you down just as you're getting your manufacturing projects running in full strength to pay them back, but by then it's too late. Game Over, try again.

What if you can continue playing after the Counsel tries to close you down when you have enough power to self-sustain yourself? What if you can tell them to go screw themselves? Or tell them kindly to walk away, because you can handle yourself from here on without them.

Imagine an option to continue onto the GAME OVER screen... or continue playing without officially being recognized by the world powers.

So by continuing to Command, as soon as you leave the final Council Monthly Report, you're told that the Council has frowned upon your decision to stop them from dismantling everything you worked hard to achieve with their money, because they're obviously going to want it all, to spread it amongst themselves to attempt to fight off the aliens, while backstabbing each other and so on, you know how it goes.

This is an onion layer of new gameplay being introduced. The Council is now your enemy as well. They will attempt to force you out by harassing your plans to save humankind. The Council is possibly operating as a secret organization within World Governments themselves, and so they have their own privately funded armies of agents and black suits who will infiltrate you within, attempt to assassinate X-COM operatives during live recovery missions, ect.

Eventually the Council will feel it is time to attack your known bases, the bases that were built while they were funding you. They will attack you when you reach a certain point score, when they see you as a rowing threat.

These kinds of base defense missions will involve Special Military Forces and consist of 2-parts like TFTD. even with basic weaponry at first, these special forces are the best of the best with rocket launchers ready, throwable explosives, high Reaction.

1st part of the Mission is defending your underground base. After you clear them from your base, the 2nd part begins, on the surface. The Military created a Forward Outpost Base (FOB like PR hehehehe) near you, so you'll have to wipe them out to be certain. After you complete this mission, they may take a very long time before attacking another known base. Next time with some alien tech as the Secret Counsel begin to sell out to the aliens just to get rid of you, because they're so egotistically, selling there own souls to the aliens for what...?

Since you no longer have to appease the Council with positive scores, you still have the option to defend terror-sites or avoid them. Just remember, you recruit differently nowadays and defending Terror-Sites with give you favor with the regions nearby gaining you a few more operative recruitment options! High Reaction/Accuracy baby.

I can see the Council as being or becoming like the secretive group from the X-Files, The Syndicate. A ruthless brutal group in charge of different parts of the world. They'd be pretty ticked off if you went against there demands. They're gonna want to shut you down even if you're doing well, because these kinds of men, they wouldn't like to see YOU become greater then they are as a group. So it's obvious they go to the aliens with secret pacts for an advantage against the rebellious X-COM.
« Last Edit: December 12, 2016, 06:37:56 am by Mr. Quiet »

Offline Sharp

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Re: Continue playing after the Council tries to shut you down
« Reply #1 on: September 13, 2013, 01:06:59 am »
How are you supposed to get new soldiers, scientists and engineers?

And why wouldn't they just bomb the bases?

I suppose if you can't get re-supplied it could be interesting to make it that you have to defeat the alien menace with your limited resources, no buying anything, selling should still be ok as black-market, no recruits so every solider you lose is one less possible for Cydonia (if you make it that far).

Although if the Council is under alien control then I assume they would just tell the aliens where your bases are so you get many invasions as well.

Offline luke83

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Re: Continue playing after the Council tries to shut you down
« Reply #2 on: September 13, 2013, 10:51:37 am »
How are you supposed to get new soldiers, scientists and engineers?

Criminal organisations, resistance and other Freedom fighters

And why wouldn't they just bomb the bases?
its a underground bunker

« Last Edit: September 13, 2013, 12:20:12 pm by luke83 »

Offline kharille

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Re: Continue playing after the Council tries to shut you down
« Reply #3 on: September 13, 2013, 11:21:29 am »
Now theres a thought.  What say an xcom shipment gets intercepted by aliens?  You're trying to land a shipment of Elerium and they get attacked.

Offline xracer

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Re: Continue playing after the Council tries to shut you down
« Reply #4 on: September 16, 2013, 10:46:26 pm »
Damn!!!! talk about greed, corruption and just about everything that makes the human race such a fun race!!!!! I like it.

However i do not like that the human anti-XCOM has to make do with no advanced tech. since we do sell alien tech why wouldn't they "acquire it" i think think it would be just a free for all with all advanced tech.

Howe you get new soldiers you say!!!
Well how about Mercs, or just the resistance like Luke said. Or maybe just a simple civilian sees us and wants to join the fight, clearly this will be on the average sub-par soldiers, but after all we can train them!!! :)
 
The war will live on!!! we will kill all aliens. . . and humans that stand in our way :S

Offline djemon_lda

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Re: Continue playing after the Council tries to shut you down
« Reply #5 on: September 17, 2013, 12:01:52 am »
I personally think this would be just too easy... having governments leaving you is a sign of your failure after all. when all countries are lost, then you basically already lost the whole planet ( except for up to 8 of your bases ). I haven't been playing ufo:enemy unknown for quite a time, and after that long pause I had when I've found the openXcom, I've said to myself that I don't want to get destroyed, and picked experienced ( 2/5 ) and in my game it's september 99' and for a few months in a row I scored at least 8k points, while the last 3 months were almost 14k. I have 3 bases with avengers and 5 spotting bases ( no activity except for building a hyper wave decoder and fusion defences there ) which basically gives full coverage of the planet.

so stop complaining - it's time to man up ;)

Offline xracer

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Re: Continue playing after the Council tries to shut you down
« Reply #6 on: September 17, 2013, 03:37:45 pm »
Quote
I personally think this would be just too easy... having governments leaving you is a sign of your failure after all. when all countries are lost, then you basically already lost the whole planet

You know that is not such a bad thing :)

Now we are the rebellion!!! at this point the game could change drastically, the aliens could start terraforming the planet or start taking the resources, and XCOM will need to start a whole different strategy, now we are teh ones that need to stay hidden, attacking aliens bases and killing specific alien targets

Offline MKSheppard

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Re: Continue playing after the Council tries to shut you down
« Reply #7 on: September 18, 2013, 01:22:53 am »
Guys, the stuff you're talking about has pretty much no chance of being implemented in OXCOM; because it requires a lot of complex rules and basically changing major parts of the game.

Something that COULD be implemented for an "Ignore the council" decision is this:

In Advanced Options have:

IGNORE COUNCIL AND FIGHT ON: YES/NO

[description tbd]

On your final council report screen; where they say:

"You have not succeeded in dealing with the alien invasion and the council of funding nations has regrettably decided to terminate the project.  Each nation shall deal with the problem as they see fit.  We can only hope that we can come to some accommodation with these apparently hostile forces, and that the general population will come to terms with the alien visitors."

You'd have the "OK" button replaced with two buttons:

"ACCEPT" and "FIGHT ON".

If you chose ACCEPT; you get the standard "bad end" with the three armed mutant image.

If you chose FIGHT ON; you return to the geoscape, and can continue to play as before; but there are several significant differences in gameplay:

------------

Unable to Build New Bases.
This represents the fact that you now don't have official support to hide all the activity that goes into building a base.

Maintenance Cost of Base Facilities - 2x or 3x normal cost.
This is intended to represent the loss of 'official' support; meaning you now have to pay significant amounts of cash to bribe local officials instead of their governments pressuring them to look the other way, regarding strange aircraft taking off, mysterious construction in the middle of nowhere (all that dirt has to go somewhere)

Grey/Black Market Changes.
You can no longer hire personnel, purchase interceptors or skyrangers, and costs of all purchaseable human weapons are increased by 2x or 3x. Additionally, the money you get for selling alien corpses/weapons/etc is decreased by 2x or 3x.

This represents the fact that the program has been formally shut down -- and you can no longer get things easily through various national governments. The reduction in money from selling recovered alien artefacts is due to there being some sort of proviso in the agreements between the council of funding nations and the aliens regarding this stuff.

Basically, all the stuff you recover becomes radioactively "hot" on the black market, and this is reflected in the going price.

Essentially, it's no longer worth it for Jimmy the Blackmarketeer to pay $84,000 for the Plasma Pistol; because  selling it now means he attracts all sorts of unwanted attention, so he won't pay the premium prices he did before.

Aliens now know locations of *most* XCOM Bases.
Any agreement between the CFN and the Aliens would undoubtly include a "now tell us where all those bases that contain those craft that are shooting down our UFOs are!".

Detection would depend on base size, e.g. that huge base with 100 engineers, 100 researchers, 40 soldiers and three hangars would definitely be turned over to the aliens in the initial transmission of information, but the small radar station or small storage base wouldn't be.

There'd also be a small chance that the base location wouldn't be turned over to the aliens, to represent still-exant dissent on the CFN; not everyone will agree with the decision to sign a pact with the aliens; but over time, this dissent would decrease, representing that these dissenters are being 'turfed out' of their respective governments.

So basically:

Month 1 after XCOM termination:

Large Base: 75% chance the aliens know it's location
Medium Base: 65% ""
Small Base: 50% ""

Month 2 after XCOM termination:

Large Base: 85% chance the aliens know it's location
Medium Base: 75% ""
Small Base: 60% ""

Aliens now destroy bases upon defeating base defenses.
Basically, instead of going to a ground assault once they get past your base defenses; the aliens fusion ball bomb the base into a smoking crater.

This represents the fact that their modus operandi has changed -- before, they had a reason to keep everything on the quiet to avoid spooking the human race; but now they can go all out. This is backed by the BAD END fluff.

----------------------

Basically, all these changes (some of them would need to be worked out for balancing), mean that choosing to fight on is more of a "hail mary" pass; intended to take some of the aggravation out of a XCOM game, where you've gotten to within 25 days of being ready to assault Cydonia, but the game ends because of a bad score. *angryface*.

Offline Hobbit Lord

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Re: Continue playing after the Council tries to shut you down
« Reply #8 on: October 20, 2013, 06:33:56 am »
This is a cool idea. Especially the two-part Government forces trying to kill you by invading the bases they know about

Can imagine the Government military would be pretty good and outnumber you, maybe they'd have a sectoid mind controller in with them. Reminds me of 'The Invaders' episodes where the military was always infiltrated

Offline Danny

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Re: Continue playing after the Council tries to shut you down
« Reply #9 on: October 20, 2013, 03:57:53 pm »
Why wouldn't you be able to get any new things?
On the BLACKmarket you can pretty much get anything you want... ;)

its often criminally gotten goods anyway, it would be nice to see terrorist sites using those plasma weapons you sold though ^^

Offline MKSheppard

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Re: Continue playing after the Council tries to shut you down
« Reply #10 on: October 22, 2013, 07:24:42 pm »
Why wouldn't you be able to get any new things?
On the BLACKmarket you can pretty much get anything you want... ;)

There's a limit to how much the black market can bear -- remember that the black marketeers want to live -- a good example would be a real life Grand Theft Auto heist of a marked black/white police car.

Theoretically you could sell it on the black market; but many black marketeers would refuse as the car would be too "hot" to deal with. Even with those who were willing to entertain the idea of dealing with a stolen police car -- they'd offer a steeply discounted price, because for all practical purposes; they have to shred the car immediately for parts -- it's too hot to allow to exist as a contiguous vehicle any longer than possible.

Offline Hobbit Lord

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Re: Continue playing after the Council tries to shut you down
« Reply #11 on: October 29, 2013, 01:38:20 am »
Guys, the stuff you're talking about has pretty much no chance of being implemented in OXCOM; because it requires a lot of complex rules and basically changing major parts of the game.

Something that COULD be implemented for an "Ignore the council" decision is this:

In Advanced Options have:

IGNORE COUNCIL AND FIGHT ON: YES/NO

[description tbd]

On your final council report screen; where they say:

"You have not succeeded in dealing with the alien invasion and the council of funding nations has regrettably decided to terminate the project.  Each nation shall deal with the problem as they see fit.  We can only hope that we can come to some accommodation with these apparently hostile forces, and that the general population will come to terms with the alien visitors."

You'd have the "OK" button replaced with two buttons:

"ACCEPT" and "FIGHT ON".

If you chose ACCEPT; you get the standard "bad end" with the three armed mutant image.

If you chose FIGHT ON; you return to the geoscape, and can continue to play as before; but there are several significant differences in gameplay:

------------

Unable to Build New Bases.
This represents the fact that you now don't have official support to hide all the activity that goes into building a base.

Maintenance Cost of Base Facilities - 2x or 3x normal cost.
This is intended to represent the loss of 'official' support; meaning you now have to pay significant amounts of cash to bribe local officials instead of their governments pressuring them to look the other way, regarding strange aircraft taking off, mysterious construction in the middle of nowhere (all that dirt has to go somewhere)

Grey/Black Market Changes.
You can no longer hire personnel, purchase interceptors or skyrangers, and costs of all purchaseable human weapons are increased by 2x or 3x. Additionally, the money you get for selling alien corpses/weapons/etc is decreased by 2x or 3x.

This represents the fact that the program has been formally shut down -- and you can no longer get things easily through various national governments. The reduction in money from selling recovered alien artefacts is due to there being some sort of proviso in the agreements between the council of funding nations and the aliens regarding this stuff.

Basically, all the stuff you recover becomes radioactively "hot" on the black market, and this is reflected in the going price.

Essentially, it's no longer worth it for Jimmy the Blackmarketeer to pay $84,000 for the Plasma Pistol; because  selling it now means he attracts all sorts of unwanted attention, so he won't pay the premium prices he did before.

Aliens now know locations of *most* XCOM Bases.
Any agreement between the CFN and the Aliens would undoubtly include a "now tell us where all those bases that contain those craft that are shooting down our UFOs are!".

Detection would depend on base size, e.g. that huge base with 100 engineers, 100 researchers, 40 soldiers and three hangars would definitely be turned over to the aliens in the initial transmission of information, but the small radar station or small storage base wouldn't be.

There'd also be a small chance that the base location wouldn't be turned over to the aliens, to represent still-exant dissent on the CFN; not everyone will agree with the decision to sign a pact with the aliens; but over time, this dissent would decrease, representing that these dissenters are being 'turfed out' of their respective governments.

So basically:

Month 1 after XCOM termination:

Large Base: 75% chance the aliens know it's location
Medium Base: 65% ""
Small Base: 50% ""

Month 2 after XCOM termination:

Large Base: 85% chance the aliens know it's location
Medium Base: 75% ""
Small Base: 60% ""

Aliens now destroy bases upon defeating base defenses.
Basically, instead of going to a ground assault once they get past your base defenses; the aliens fusion ball bomb the base into a smoking crater.

This represents the fact that their modus operandi has changed -- before, they had a reason to keep everything on the quiet to avoid spooking the human race; but now they can go all out. This is backed by the BAD END fluff.

----------------------

Basically, all these changes (some of them would need to be worked out for balancing), mean that choosing to fight on is more of a "hail mary" pass; intended to take some of the aggravation out of a XCOM game, where you've gotten to within 25 days of being ready to assault Cydonia, but the game ends because of a bad score. *angryface*.
Completely agree with this

Fighting on should be an additional challenge and change the gameplay, it also looks like something much more easily implementable (just changing a few 'flags' in the game, cost multiplier etc)

Offline dptheog

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Re: Continue playing after the Council tries to shut you down
« Reply #12 on: December 10, 2018, 04:43:05 am »
Old topic, but if this is still a thing for you, you could just edit DIFFICULTY.RUL and set the losing conditions.  Here's a sample:

defeatScore: -9000 #modded from -900, there should be an achievement for getting a -9000 Council score
defeatFunds: -3400000000 #modded, if it worked for Donald Trump in the 90s, it can work for X-Com, too

The_Funktasm

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Re: Continue playing after the Council tries to shut you down
« Reply #13 on: December 10, 2018, 03:09:03 pm »
You've already generally sold the COFN any excess alien tech and traded current research info to them in default XCOM. I figure that's why you get Score for research and alien artifacts collected in the field. They wouldn't exactly /have/ to make pacts with the aliens to survive, and I kind of doubt they'd waste the time to really fight XCOM with aliens to worry about.

I think a reasonable scenario here would be that the COFN fragments into the countries that have alien pacts or bases, and those that do not. Essentially alien puppet forces and COFN forces, or a sort of "XCOM 2"  Both have the level of technology that XCOM can field at the point that they have gone rogue.

Another alternative is blocs of former COFN countries having post-XCOM secret factions of their own.

Just some ideas.

Also considering you're a government(s) agency... Isn't it just video game logic that you aren't just fired and replaced as commander in the actual game?
« Last Edit: December 14, 2018, 11:42:55 am by The_Funktasm »

Offline dptheog

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Re: Continue playing after the Council tries to shut you down
« Reply #14 on: December 14, 2018, 04:42:02 am »
X-Piratez did explore a kind of fragmentation scenario, in perhaps the most realistic point of the mod's story since it resulted in nuclear war.  The aliens then stopped the war and so the story continues centuries after X-Com lost their bid for freedom at Cydonia.