Terrain based critters

[Eddie]

I would like to add units to a battlescape based on the terrain. For example add megascoripons to a desert battlescape. The main motivation to do that is to add atmosphere and to add more variety to landed/crashed ufo missions. Especially civilan missions could be spiced up by adding some critters. I guess it is not possible with the ruleset as of now. How hard would it be to code that in? Would it be worth it?

The now possible but half satisfying way to spice up civilian missions would be to add blood dogs to the civilian faction and have them as dQty only, so there is a chance to have a few or none at all. That would add kind of a random factor to these missions and something to shoot (assuming you don't shoot civilians). Also, the blood dogs more or less fits most terrains. But the blood dogs would not attack the civilians which I feel that they should. That would make interesting missions, where you have to quickly kill the blood dogs to prevent them from killing the civilians that you want to capture alive.

[Solarius Scorch]

Yes, I thought the same many times!

Or we could have a custom faction mechanics and use it to add critters.

[tormodino]

Agreed. Some variety in the different battlescapes would be great.

[Premier]

Interesting idea, but wouldn't it screw with mission flow?

I mean, you get this perfectly fine and challenging mission, fight your way through it, kill/incapacitate the last enemy... and you can't finish it, because you still need track down the last damn Killer Rabbit / Rad-Hedgehog / Megascorpion or whatever which is hiding in some corner of the map. It's just a letdown having to do that.

Unless they belong to the same faction as civilians, so you don't need to take them out - but then (I guess???) they wouldn't attack you, and all they'd do is slow down AI turns with their scurrying about.

What I could see is Monster Hunts with different critters, depending on climate.

[Solarius Scorch]

Allowing new "sides" (factions with their own turn) and with moddable presets (who shoots whom, who needs to be all killed) would take care of all this

[tormodino]

Is that a thing that's happening in the foreseeable future, Solarius?

[Solarius Scorch]

Is that a thing that's happening in the foreseeable future, Solarius?

Hopefully...

[Meridian]

Just to add a different opinion, I think it's completely unnecessary.
It's one of those things, which you think are cool as heck and when you get them, you are like "meh, where can I turn it off?"...

[tormodino]

I can't see any way I would not enjoy having more variety of enemies (or even possible allies) and less restrictive victory conditions in battles.
But if the "kill/stun all enemies" remain the only way to solve a tactical scenario then I agree that it might not really be worth it.

[Arthanor]

I rather agree with Meridian.

Unless the AI is overhauled, having "allies" won't be a very rewarding experience. Either they're pretty useless except as bullet catchers or, worse, they lose you points by dying and they become sort of buffed civilians. That's already possible with the "armed civilian" development any ways. I think Hobbes used it for Area51?

More enemies can be done by deployment so the only difference is 3-way fights, but then it becomes "pass the first 30 turns to let them kill each others, then finish the stragglers". The AI can't handle that either. Neutral units nobody bothers about? I'd rather they be animated tiles in certain map blocks (like a stationary cow moving its head or whatever) than having to wait for them to walk about.

[Dioxine]

It all depends on mission. With the right kind of mission, these "third-faction" units can create interesting experience.

Example of 'allies': defend the village/large-scale battle deployment. You can't really run away since you're spawned in the middle of this, and your side is outgunned so you risk a massive score hit if you hide. If massed battles aren't epic, I don't know what is. True this will be possible with armed civilians.

Example of 'hostile to all': get to the power core before it overloads, fighting Chaos and Genestealers. Yes a timed mission.

Example of 'true neutral': capture the VIP mission, where you don't need to stun all the VIPs to win. Can also be used as 'rescue the pilot' mission if said pilot is not supposed to instantly die.

[Meridian]

In all these examples, there are only 3 factions (friendly, hostile and neutral)... in example 2 only two factions if I understand correctly.

With armed neutrals, mission timer and enhanced mission objectives... the current nightlies might even cover all of it... or can be extended if necessary.

I still don't see any reason for custom faction #4, #5, etc.
Three factions is a concept which stood the test of time... and is proven by countless games across all genres.

[Eddie]

The critters was my idea to counter a problem that I see in the current game mechanics. Of course, I have not yet explained where I see the problem.

The problem is no-lights-armor, enemy night vision range and camo. With the recent night vision gui, playing in darkness has become viable, something you wouldn't have done before. With the no-lights-armor, you can now hide in the darkness, which is not possible in vanilla. Most early game enemies have night vision range of 9. This makes playing a night mission preferable to a day mission, especially with the 40 vision range during the day. Playing at night is basically the answer to the 40 vision range. Now add in guerillia gear with camouflage 5. When in darkness, enemies with night vision 9 now need to be 4 tiles away to see you. This is equivalent to haveing full smoke cover on every tile that is in darkness. It's even better than smoke, because you still have night vision 12. If you want to see further, just throw a flare. To kill the light, pick the flare back up or destroy it.
Remember playing vanilla night missions, back when you didn't know how to use flares properly? Thats what the computer is now up against. But he has not the faintest idea how to handle the situation.

Tl;dr: with guerilla outfit at night, night vision 9 enemies become a joke.


Why I wanted to have a chance of blood dogs on civilian missions was because these have night vision 16. With guerillia that gets reduced to 11, so still not that dangerous, but better than compleately harmless 4 vision range civilians. My civilian missions I play like this: put guerillia gear on everyone and a shotgun with rubber shells. Sit in the darkness in front of the enemy ship. Press end turn until every civilian has died fallen to reaction fired rubber rounds. No need to even move most of the time, just the occasional reload.

Adding more night vision capable enemies is a possible solution to that problem but not the only option. Camouflage for example could have an added minimum detection range variable, 9 for example. That way, guerilla gear would reduce the night vision of osiron security from 16 to 11 (which is really helpful), but leave night vision range 9 enemies untouched. Or someone can teach the AI how to uses flares...

Just to add, critters would still be cool even with the night vision problem resolved, because you have more stuff to shoot. With the possibility of blood dogs, I finally found a reason to carry a pirate assault cannon around. I like that gun, but there is a lack of viable targets, meaning targets where that gun is actually your best option.

[Solarius Scorch]

Good points on both sides. But I would like to add that while most possible scenarios are possible with armed civilians, it's a bit of a half-way solution, since (to my knowledge) they don't even use normal weapons, but some sort of fixed weapons instead. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

But even this detail aside, factions would ultimately be for something more than just custom sides. I can imagine Apocalypse-like behaviour like a faction being hostile in some circumstances (for example if you haven't researched the right tech, or simply if they don't like you right now) and neutral/friendly another time, on the same mission. Sure, it's far from now, but I think going in this direction is worthwhile.
Also, it's not just about who shoots whom, but also who doesn't have to shoot whom. Some critters might attack "X-Com", but ignore "the aliens"; and killing all killer rabbits shouldn't be necessary for the mission.

[khade]

It could also allow you to lurk on the outskirts of a battle between two enemy factions, clean up the survivors, and loot!

Though we could  probably get that by having the fight actually start at the cleanup phase, and have a mixed enemy group, they're not going to shoot at each other once you show up.