civilians in base defense missions?

[moriarty]

just a quick call for opinions: would anybody like to see your civilian staff in base defense missions? the original gave you this cheesy explanation about civilians and craft having been evacuated (although they never could explain how 200 engineers and 150 scientists got out within the 20 minutes warning time you had... and all of the personnel and craft still disappeared completely if you lost).

PROs:
- a little bit more realistic
- additional objective for base missions: protect your civilians
- I'd just love to see that scientist picking up an alien artifact he's working on and blasting a Muton out of his lab (OK, I know, won't work anyway, but still...)

CONs:
- if you add them all, the base does get kinda crowded. my research base usually has 100-150 scientist  perhaps only add 1 battlescape civilian for every 5 real ones?
- could turn into excessive battlescape micro-management (see above)


A bit more game-changing: maybe if the aliens wouldn't always enter through the hangars and access lift (which only leads to weird base-layouts for optimised defensibility anyway) but blast their way through the outer walls? then one of your objectives would be to get as many civilians as possible to the transport craft or access lift and thus out of the map. you would actually GAIN points for evacuating them safely, giving you the chance to turn even a losing base-defense mission into something other than domplete devastation.

[pmprog]

It's a nice idea, I like it.

So would you let the user control the civilians? or be like a terror mission, where the computer does? I think in this case, you'd need to let the player control them.

Also, what stats would you give them? They'd need to be awfully low (not trained for that sort of thing)

[luke83]

I think civilians should be in more maps that they are currently but i am more thinking along the lines special random mission sets ( maybe only one per year)

You could have to defend a large science lab , tank workshop ( Area 51 map), UN building, army base , navy base , airfield, cruise liner ( TFTD), Defend the President etc. That way people could work on one of large maps and once we have a nice set it would be a nice change to the usual shot down UFOs.

[moriarty]

@pmprog: definitely user-controlled and awfully low-stat. I guess the engineers would have high strength values, and some scientists might actually have a moderate accuracy, but generally they'd need a lot of protection. on the other hand, there might even be situations where a grenade thrown by a weak scientist will save the day... they would start without any weapons, but if you get them to a storeroom or an xcom soldier tosses them a gun, they could also be used offensively. in desperate situations.

@luke83 I've read your hints at this kind of thing before somewhere... I love the idea. Would you throw them in randomly as terror missions or actually have them as a different mission type? "protect friendly installation" or something? with special impact on country friendlyness rating?

[luke83]

Not as a replacement to terror site, I think it would be best as something random , a average of one per year  i think would be max i would want to see, no point over doing it.

[Volutar]

moriarty, having base with alot of useless player controlled units will probably become a management hell. How much units player would controll then? 30? I doubt in pleasure of switching though 20 scientists (let them be 1:5), choosing The One.
This game suffers from unit controll bothering, when you have to make an action for every unit you have. Or at least skip it, anyway it's boring most of the time. Or you lack of successive actions just because you're lazy to act for 20 players.

Even CPU controlled 20 civilians can become a pain, specially when most of them are exposed to your units.

Jagged Aliance have RealtimeMode when noone is near, xcom have not.

But really it's quite big gameplay problem, which goes far beyond this topic. XCOM developers have resolved it by avoiding such missions and lessen these situations (except for last alien problem).

You're suggesting going into it. Anyways it goes far beyond classic xcom gameplay, and getting into totally different game.
We could make other topic for that, for example "Handling mass units in TBS", to discuss aspects of this problem.

[Daiky]

In XCOM Enemy unknown they even changed it so your squad only has max 6 members. And I think that's a good evolution, 6 members is about the max of units I want to have control over.

Engineers and scientists are evacuated :p

[luke83]

To me Civilians of any description should remain CPU controlled and only a few max on a map. They should not be in every map as that would be a pain and take away from the special scenario of a terror mission.

[Amunak]

You could say that everyone was evacuated expect few ppl who couldn't make it to the transport in time. Then spawn 2 to 6 civilians, not depending on engineers or scientists counts - there's other personell, too. But they should be player-controlled; otherwise it would be probably impossible to defend them. Maybe if their ai was programmed to just stay in some upper hardly-accessed areas. Anyway I'd like to see it - it would be a nice variegation.

If you make a special mission once per year, that would be approx. two missions per game (for me at least) and that's not much. It's a shame that  I have only about two terror missions in every game (if any).

[luke83]

It would be cool if there was a Random Mission Spawner built into the Rulesets so anyone could define there own random mission types / there frequency of use / map setup to suit there own tastes.

[Volutar]

Daiky, 6 units to control each move, yeah, but there could be larger pool of units you are ABLE to control each move.
By the way scientists and engineers are unnamed units, so player won't be able to distinguish one from another.

My UI proposal to simplify unit controll (version 2.0 or whatever):
to add unit scrollable list (probably with page scroller):
1. Iconic unit head, Unit name [Red square with number of aliens seen]
2. Nested numbers of 4 main stats (+ optionally bars), TUs and energy are bigger than health + morale (or highlighted).
3. Fatal wound icon with number.
Dead units are greyed (all elements), Unconscious units have purple background at head icon.
sorry for offtopic part:(

[Daiky]

So a UI like Jagged Alliance 2, or basically every other TBS game

[Volutar]

Personally I think user interface have nothing with gameplay, and should be redone in order to make game interface more user friendly.
My list of what makes xcom xcom:
1. Globe with night/day shading.
2. Buttons in the right side of globe.
3. Unknown technology researching and item manufacturing.
4. Action points (TUs) action nature.
5. Tile-based battlezone.
6. Watching bullet flying and hitting obstacles/aliens (in 3d).
7. Night shaded missions with flares.
8. "Hidden Movement" (turn-based gameplay).
9. Inventory screen with inventory cells and GROUND cells.
10. Ability to take unconscious/dead unit in one hand and throw it (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cB_vlaP-3uo).

[luke83]

Wow people throw people in real life , that's crazy

[hsbckb]

10. Ability to take unconscious/dead unit in one hand and throw it (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cB_vlaP-3uo).

Sorry for a bit off topic. It will be more reasonable if the game treat the unconscious/dead unit as two-hand weapon. When we put the two-hand weapon on one of the hand slot, the other hand should become grey and unusable.

Some two-hand weapon such as rifle can be used by one hand. However, the accuracy will decrwase. You can throw the dead unit using one hand but the throwing range and accuracy decrease i.e.  you can only throw the dead unit in front of you.