Pilots... for interceptors?

[Solarius Scorch]

A much as I'm against the pilot soldier concept, I really like this rescue mission idea. Although I have the feeling that you would have your to-be-rescued pilot either killed or saved all the time - it would be very difficult to create a map where the odds of his survival are actually interesting.

You could go the UFO: AFtershock way and make the pilot attract enemy fire only after s/he was found and attached to the team. A simplification, sure, but whatever.

[b]

The idea of pilot rescue missions gave me the idea that you could also have POW rescue missions  in alien bases or downed UFO's.  There could also be an escape mission where unarmed POW's find a way to take control of a UFO, or escape from an aliens' human containment room in a base(this is where the bear handed 'hit' attack might be useful to add).   Maybe they would find some captured weapons or alien weapons in a storage room nearby, or maybe an alien guard would have fallen asleep or was knocked unconscious by in-fighting, by other captured specimens, or by an unexpected explosion or earthquake or something, so that the POW could grab their weapons and make an escape. 

Also,  live alien soldiers might be able to attempt to escape from alien containment facilities, similar to a base invasion scenario, but with only the amount of live aliens you have in the alien containment room.  maybe this would happen sometimes when researching a live alien, and more likely when funds are low. Some of the scientists could be turned into chrysalids for example.

[yrizoud]

About pilot rescue missions, I think the difficulty would be extremely different depending on terrain (farm = good, flat iceland = bad) and random map generation (placement of cover and enemies)
Randomness has a chance of creating extremely interesting situations, but there's no minimum guarantee : Like the "small scout" mission, a lot of times, you see the alien first, you shoot, it's over.
Personally I would be totally OK if a rescue mission is successful in 2 turns without even seeing any aliens. I know that the next time it could be hell, losing half the squad from a grenade.

For variation, you can have the pilot initially stunned (aliens totally ignore stunned humans), so you have to heal or carry him back.

[Solarius Scorch]

For variation, you can have the pilot initially stunned (aliens totally ignore stunned humans), so you have to heal or carry him back.

This

[Dioxine]

Sorry to rain on your parade, but what rescue mission? The guy was shot down over a friendly territory, and the aliens do not give a damn about XCom planes once they're downed... Rescue him from the jungle snakes maybe, but you don't need XCom to do that task, it can be carried out by the local authorities...

[B1ackwolf]

Sorry to rain on your parade, but what rescue mission? The guy was shot down over a friendly territory, and the aliens do not give a damn about XCom planes once they're downed... Rescue him from the jungle snakes maybe, but you don't need XCom to do that task, it can be carried out by the local authorities...

"The abduction by Aliens is widely reported, despite the Aliens' attempts to erase the experience from their victims' memories. Abductees report being subject to humiliating physical examinations, including impregnation of alien foetuses and bizarre genetic experiments. The purpose behind this activity appears to be linked to genetic mutation and manipulation of the Aliens own genetic material."

well if they do so many effort abducting civilians, , i guess they would not miss this opportunity, Specially if the victim is a high ranked soldier with information to interrogate 

[Dioxine]

Well there is no mention of interrogation in this entry, is there? Unless of course the aliens see XCom soldiers as a prime genetic material source Better not to go into thinking about various things the aliens could add or take away from them...

[B1ackwolf]

Well there is no mention of interrogation in this entry, is there? Unless of course the aliens see XCom soldiers as a prime genetic material source Better not to go into thinking about various things the aliens could add or take away from them...

well i think you are right,but why the psionic gifted races like ethereals...or just the common sectoid,would not interrogate them? if they can manipulate their minds,why not SEARCH information in them ?
and also...is know that the aliens love the human genetic material(is like their "lego's blocks" or something ,always doing new weird things with them xD

[SenaC]

As someone who's a big fan of fighter combat, the idea of actually having pilots is pretty awesome. As for transports, I do something like this now. When I start the game, I pick out a marginal soldier, reasonable bravery etc but not really much good for anything. I list them as FO (Flight Officer) [name] and now that I can do it, set them to the back of the transport. They're my pilot. They get a pistol by default, and that's mostly it. I do my best to leave them in the transport and it's saved me more than once. If it's needed, they can step out with a medkit or something, or try to help cover a retreat.

[Daemonjax]

I could totally see myself or someone else modifying the source code to incorporate ideas like this, but I would advise against making your own fork before the codebase is stable (way past 1.0 release).

Anyways, hi forum.

[kharille]

I wonder how XcomUtil managed this.  Anyone got screen shots of a landed fighter?  They did manage it right?

[yrizoud]

Pretty well, considering they did it using only the standard tiles.



(From this thread https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php?topic=668.0)
(edit: completed and packaged for OpenXCOM here : https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php?topic=1667.msg15452#msg15452)