Play as the Alien Menace

[Slaughter]

Another thing: One must wonder if human as aliens doens't get cheesy fast because you're killing humans left and right with heavy plasma and Ethereals.

I think the way to do would be to limit aliens to using the good guns in small ammounts - You can't produce early on because your superiors are wary of humans or other aliens stealing it early on, so you jave to use stuff like alien lasers or pay through the noose in elerium to send in the good guns.

To limiy species, you need research and DNA in order to adapt them to Earth's enviroment.

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[FlyingSaucer]

Geez, this is something I have always wanted since I really got into X-Com back on my first UFO playthrough all those years ago.  I'd kill for a full game from the alien's perspective.

I always thought TFTD would be the best candidate for it as the alien forces in the game have a position somewhat more similar to X-COM when compared to the first game.  They have a single earthly starting "base" in their city of T'leth, as opposed to starting on Mars in the first game.  T'leth is also ancient and being reawakened, something you could easily translate into a pacing mechanic for alien development.  Say instead of building new facilities, the aliens "reactivate" dormant but already existing facilities in T'leth, with different facilities requiring different resources gathered from flying sub missions to be completed, but also granting new subs/tech/aliens as they are brought back online.  The aliens win by reactivating the ultimate alien cryo chamber, X-COM wins by preventing it and conducting a successful attack on T'leth

Those are my two cents at any rate

[Solarius Scorch]

I always thought TFTD would be the best candidate for it as the alien forces in the game have a position somewhat more similar to X-COM when compared to the first game.  They have a single earthly starting "base" in their city of T'leth, as opposed to starting on Mars in the first game.  T'leth is also ancient and being reawakened, something you could easily translate into a pacing mechanic for alien development.  Say instead of building new facilities, the aliens "reactivate" dormant but already existing facilities in T'leth, with different facilities requiring different resources gathered from flying sub missions to be completed, but also granting new subs/tech/aliens as they are brought back online.  The aliens win by reactivating the ultimate alien cryo chamber, X-COM wins by preventing it and conducting a successful attack on T'leth

Great idea!

[yrizoud]

This sounds great indeed, but requires making a lot of small-sized terrains for ship / coast attacks. Because battles that you initiate will be in plain air, except in the rare cases where you shoot down a XCOM ship.

[FlyingSaucer]

This sounds great indeed, but requires making a lot of small-sized terrains for ship / coast attacks. Because battles that you initiate will be in plain air, except in the rare cases where you shoot down a XCOM ship.

I imagine there would be a fair number of downed flying sub defenses as well.  Or defending your subs that have landed to perform a mission.

I could see defending crashed flying subs/UFOs, especially early on, as a way to attempt to stall X-COM research progress.  They can't research what they don't recover.

[Slaughter]

Damnit I had a nice reply typed up to you guys but I lost it. GRRRRRRRR

Just some (mostly human) enemy suggestions for prospective alien plays, I will try to re-create the detail again later:

- Locals (badly-armed, numerous civvies, to fight in Harvest and Research, angry civvies in terror missions, etc)

- Inquisitors (crazy anti-alien cultists, want to destroy aliens and their tech)

- Men in Blue (police forces and investigators - noisey Mulder and Scully types - working for X-COM/Governments. A bit weak on weapons, but good on numbers. Eventually go full SWAT because screw you. Also, their "terror" unit could be Attack Dogs!)

- Military (soldier types, complete with tanks, jeeps, the works. Militaries of nations. Lags one tier of weapons behind X-COM)

- Gray Ops (mercs working for unscrupulous corporations, power-mongers, shadowy manipulators, ruthless dictators - EXALTish types - who want to steal the alien tech to become rich/powerful. Had an idea that they could use primitive cyborgs or something unscrupulous)

- Rebel Hybrids (human-sectoid hybrids who rebelled against alien overlords using a mix of alien and human weapons, and psi. Want to overthrown the Sectoids but don't trust pure humans not to kill them. Could be the Alien game's equivalent of Ethereals)

- Enforcer Androids (Enforcer Androids created by X-COM's Professor Able Standard. In this timeline, Enforcer program was not cancelled and sorta the ancestor of Apocalypse's Androids. Tough, strong, no psionic abilities but invulnerable to psi as well. X-COM's mutons, so to say. There's a mod somewhere that adds Enforcers to Open X-COM - https://www.openxcom.com/mod/x-com-enforcer)

I'm not sure how X-COM itself would deploy. Of course, it should be the strongest force, and constantly evolve. One cool idea would be to get a lot of X-COM vets and have them create "deployment mixes" - think of different numbers of differently-ranked troops with a diverse mix of weapons, strategy and AI. It would be especially interesting if X-COM had access not only to vanilla but the new weapons modded by the community that are often seen in mods - shotgun, assault rifle, flamer, sniper rifle, grenade launcher, etc.

If you're doing something that has the aliens fight other aliens as well (Rebel Aliens/Aliens vassals of Micronoids/TFTD Aliens vs UFO aliens), then it gets easier, but I tried to do my best in thinking. Could even add Apoc aliens if you feel like it.

There's also the issue of ships and alien missions, but I will talk about it later.

[Slaughter]

Some thoughts I've cultivating about the whole Sectoids vs Micronoids idea:

- Lorewise, this could happen before the supernova that destroys the Micronoids' world. Humans stay ignorant of the whole affair, Sectoids with their superior tech find out, they fight. They use a different technology from Dimensional Gates (or the gates are somewhere humans can't see). Your alien group is tasked with investigating and then fighting this new threat.

- How would Disruptors be in OG X-COM mechanics? I'm thinking that rather than making them another "more power" energy weapon, make them like people often use them in RT: They're a low power, rapid-fire, unlimited ammo weapon. Think more like conventional guns or lasers rather than plasma. Maybe give them a armor-eroding effect to prevent heavy armor from simply tanking it all, and make early-game armor and stuff more vulnerable to Disruptors. They're not a improvement, they're a different sort of weapon.

- Dimension Missiles: Just MOAR POWER? One idea I had is that its literally a DIMENSION missile - As in, Blaster Launchers are teleguided, Dimension Missiles phase or teleport through things. Similar, but different.

- Forcefields = Huge HP? I'm thinking late-game Anthropods with more HP than a Cyberdisk here. A separate HP pool independent from normal HP would really rock.

- Teleportation and Invisibility could be clever tools, especially if you're unable to reverse-engineer them (maybe its dependent upon the aliens' dimensional tech).

- Entropy Launchers: Armor-eroding and damage only? Any way to mimmick their cool effect?

Enemy races? Going by UFO it would be Humanoid-ish enemy with guns + Terror unit with exotic ability. So Anthropods and Skeletoids?

Maybe subvert that somewhat - say, Brainsuckers as both a stand-alone race (alongside human thralls and Popper terror unit?) and attack? Would Megaspawns be better a race in themselves or a Terror Unit? Multi and Hyperworms?