Will TFTD allow UFO Defense weaponry?

[Taberone]

Not sure if this has been answered before, and I've been inactive quite a bit. If there is ever an OpenXCOM version of TFTD, will it allow weaponry from UFO Defense? In vanilla TFTD, UFO Defense guns don't work underwater. Fair enough explanation..... Until you have a mission on land. You still have to waddle around in diving suits and use crappy harpoon guns instead of the XCOM Rifle(Which is still an improvement over the harpoon gun) or the laser rifle.

Might be overpowered to use Plasma/Lasers even if they are only for use on land missions, though.

[Arthanor]

TftD uses a different palette (selection of colors to draw graphics with) than UFO Defense, so it is impossible to directly import UFO Defense stuff into TftD.

Of course, given how easy it is to mod weapons in OpenXCom, I expect that one of the first TftD mods will be someone making a "best approximation" of the UFO Defense weapons.

[yrizoud]

Recent related discussion:

Fighting aliens on land with harpoon guns is so ridiculous.. There must be better weapons than that available to XCom for surface engagements.

In original TFTD game, it's justified by the combat being 95% aquatic.
It would feel weird if the game let you embark non-waterproof weapons with you 300 meters under the sea on every missions, and always have them in perfect condition when you need to fire a shot on land.

Personally, I think I'd rather tweak the dart weapons to be more useful, rather than add the UFO rifle/pistol.

[Arthanor]

That's a case of "doing your best to rationalize a game restriction" though.

No military organization would not send their elite troops with the best available equipment for the mission and I cannot believe that there is no better gun for ground combat than a harpoon gun.

If we are to believe XCom is the best force to respond to the situation (which they should be), they have to have the best equipment available to regular human forces. Otherwise a normal commando unit (or even SWAT) is better suited and XCom should not bother to respond to terror missions but concentrate on underwater ones.

Either:
1- The triton has a waterproof compartment where that stuff is stored (but then you have to search through a lot of stuff when equipping soldiers).
2- The triton has little space (maybe some kind of equipment limit like in the original games should be enforced?) so you have to manually unload the underwater combat gear and load the ground combat one.

Both of the above allow for proper above water equipment. Otherwise we have:
3- XCom was created and is operated by a bunch of ... people ... who believe XCom has to only have underwater equipment but still needs to respond to above water attacks (and that's not the game I want to play, especially since I, as the player, am in charge of XCom operations)

Of course, most of this is irrelevant as soon as you get gauss weapons and aqua-plastic armor. Them being scientific breakthroughs designed to fight aliens makes it once more believable that XCom troops are the best response to alien attacks.

All of this is easily solved by mods any ways, so it is not required to be addressed by the OpenXCom TftD release version which should concentrate on reproducing vanilla TftD (and keeping/improving the awesome modding capabilities of OpenXCom!).

[ChainsawAardvark]

As I recall, the X-com of TFTD is not actually related to its predecessor. Our 2040s incarnation began as a salvage company searching the sea floor for wreckage of aliens.

At some point its made clear that a) many of the advanced lasers/plasma guns don't work in aquatic environments and b) 40 years later, the Elirum supply is used up. With the original alien threat eliminated, the mandate for X-com probably expired. Most nations don't like paramilitary groups with advanced weapons and access to anywhere within their borders. Everything was probably either turned into commemorative coins or locked away in warehouse 23 next to the ark of the covenant.

Working at 500 to 1000 feet underwater to repair oil pipelines and the like is very dissimilar form your 150 feet or less SCUBA dives (my uncle Joeseph used to do deep welding off Louisiana). TFTD Xcom isn't recruiting ship to shore frogmen, but JIM suit operators and oxy-helium mix experts which may explain the lacking military skills.

As much as I hate the movie Armageddon, this really is "oil roughnecks with the skills we need vs the experts who do not" just flying in the opposite direction.

Perhaps what we require is a new research project: Secrets of the Past (or "Unlocking the Bunkers") where the new commander tries to find veterans or weapons from the old X-com. Fluid breathing apparatus (yes, that stuff from The Abyss. Yes, it is real) might be a neat point of interest as well.

As to the dart weapons - they are actually unrealistically powerful compared to real underwater weapons like the ASM-DT and P11. But we could introduce a feature like the mod for OXC that lets us research toxins/additives for the darts. A non-lethal one for ranged stun and a powerful neurotoxin (blue ring octopus?) would give the weapon new utility and longevity.

[yrizoud]

In fact quite a few things make more sense in the TFTD setting :

All terror scenarios are small scale (10 civilians threatened by a dozen aliens) :
- In UFO, it's in New York city. What the hell are the police and army doing ? Why bring 8 foreigners from thousands kilometers away ?
- In TFTD, it's (more often) a single boat hundreds of kilometers from land, or "Easter island". XCOM actually is the best response they can get.

In a crash recovery, you leave an agent behind while you abort, he's lost forever
-In UFO : Can't they take the train ?
- in TFTD : Sure, it's in the middle of an ocean

etc.

[Arthanor]

2040s XCom is related but barely. After the first alien war was won, XCom was kept going for a short amount of time (to make sure it was over) and then turned into an Elerium scavenging organization. After crashed UFOs on land had all been taken care of, underwater operations started. When that started to run out too, XCom was privatized and bought by a rich dude. That XCom looked little like EU XCom we know for sure.

At the beginning of the 2nd alien war, they had only one base and diving equipment. But XCom's owner convinced the funding council to reactivate XCom as an international strike force, which is when the player takes control.

Since their base are above water and they can be expected to engage aliens above water, it would make sense for them to be given whatever is the regular infantry arsenal of the 2040. While that certainly isn't plasma and alloy-based armors, it is much more likely to be some sort of firearm (or even mass produced lasers) than harpoon guns.

Your argument makes a lot sense for the quality of troops in TftD and the lack of tech from the original (except maybe lasers, depending on if they were mass produced or locked away after the first war), but it doesn't cover needing to engage aliens on the ground with weapons that are designed for underwater engagements. That still makes no sense.

@yrizoud: Indeed, that and being an oceanographer (loved Cousteau when I was a kid!) makes TftD my favorite.

[shinr]

The Elerium supply was not completely used up by the 40', it is just so scarce that the governments hoard it and more or less use it exclusively in R&D and refining of non-elerium tech.

Still, my own view on UFO stuff in TFTD as surface only weapons:
-Lasers weapons: Infinite ammo, strong enough to kill Aquatoids, but the Gillmen and Tasoth are resistant to it, and don't even bother using it on the Lobstermen.
-Plasma weapons: Slightly weaker than the Sonic weapons, but either 1) the cost of their ammo is so high that even with exploits you might go bankrupt if you rely on them or 2) you are given a limited amount of plasma ammunition at the beginning of the game, and you cannot buy more.
-Rocket Launcher: Because the surface missions need more BOOM and both the Torpedo launcher and the Disprutor are underwater only.