Cydonia Champain

[thegeewz]

I envision a thumbnail or final mission like button in the upper left corner of another Geoscape, all grays and reds, unfamiliar cities with neato names and no oceans. Clicking it will reverse the setup and put earths thumbnail in the corner and is reversible at will. A base here will cost 50M*X to start and require the Cydonia or bust tech. All monetary costs in this place are *X. Recruiting solders here results in filling your ranks with Muton and Sectoid soldiers. A PSI-lab equivalent can be built with your captured alien garbage. This lab can be used to attract the more powerful and PSI gifted aliens as well as serve the same purpose as the earth equivalent, just got to keep it stocvked full of alien food and entertainment. Alien tech is available for direct sale and no Terran stuff can be bought. Game places Alien bases all over the place and aggressively seeks out and destroys the X-Com project.   Eventually a tech tree opens for Alien transport to bring your martian mercs home to fight the good fight here on earth. Maybe even a whole new race or something. Call it an expansion

Its a optional role reversal for once the tech has all been researched. This finally makes it worth the long deadly fight to Cydonia.

Its always disappointing to fire all my scientists once the techs have been exhausted. There would be a whole new tech tree on arrival. Oh, and at the end of the month your earthbases need to send supply ships to your Cydonia bases. They are full of H2o, which is also used as a crafting material for various earth techs on Mars.

Its the endgame I've been dreaming about for literally 20 years and it's still a complete fantasy. I bet You got a little excited there though eh? Call it a feature request.

[volutar]

You do it!

[Warboy1982]

yikes...

from a feasibility standpoint, you might be better off making a whole game based solely on mars as a "pre-sequel" between ufo and tftd

[yrizoud]

Yes, a mars-based 'total conversion' is both more reasonable, and possibly a better game in itself (than trying to make a gameplay which involves both planets at the same time).
However, landscapes of Mars or not so varied as Earth, so the battles could get repetitive.

[kharille]

interesting concept...  certainly better idea than some of the sequels...

[volutar]

It would require for entirely new geoscape engine. It's not about oxc in anywhere near future.

[Warboy1982]

the method OP suggests, sure, but a solely mars-based campaign is certainly doable

[volutar]

With the inherent mars bases pre-created? With all process reversed compared with xcom? With xcom soldiers playing role of invaders? Certainly it's doable. But it's entirely another geoscape concept not related to vanilla.
It's not about defending mars. It's about invading. And oxc engine doesn't support it.

[Warboy1982]

i didn't say anything about that

[Hobbes]

However, landscapes of Mars or not so varied as Earth, so the battles could get repetitive.

Actually the landscapes of Mars could be about as varied as Earth: there are ice caps on its poles, ancient flood plains, mountains and 'chaotic' terrain (a geographical feature exclusive of Mars). The main issue would be the lack of vegetation and the color it brings.

[volutar]

So it gonna be campaign for defending mother cydonia from the invading earthlings? Totally feasible in this respect. If we presume that earth technology to beyond Martians'. And final battle with killing xcom commander in his bunker.

[Warboy1982]

sort of... ufos wouldn't be coming from earth, necessarily, or even from off the planet. in raw game terms they simply "appear" and "disappear" and this could be interpreted as anything... descending into the atmosphere, launching from a hidden underwater facility, or teleporting from another dimension. i'm thinking invasion of mars, with VERY long delivery times for personnel and equipment and high shipping costs, and very little return on selling things. the alien missions would represent a "defensive" shift in the alien strategy, and alien base attacks would have to be somehow made more likely. i think putting retaliation missions on the schedule would be able to achieve this in the short term.

of course, what you said is viable, too.