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Author Topic: Ideas for my TFTD megamod  (Read 4640 times)

Offline The Reaver of Darkness

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Ideas for my TFTD megamod
« on: December 13, 2017, 08:54:59 am »
I recently had some ideas for TFTD that inspired me to get creative. After working on it a bit, I came up with some stuff. I'd like to hear what you guys think, and if you have any ideas for changing it or not. I'm in the very early planning stages so pretty much anything goes.

The basic idea is to go sort of in the style of my first megamod, patching holes in the original game but leaving it intact as much as possible. This time, however, I'm going for a drastic change: instead of making TFTD a copy of the first game, it's going to be its own thing which fits better into the lore and makes some sense. Old tech didn't magically disappear, so you're going to see some things based on technology developed in the first war.


The idea that I had was to make the land combat easy: you've got a bunch of tech from the first war and it's been developed a bit since the war. The aliens, on the other hand, do best in water. They're out of their element and so it's very difficult for them to combat you on land. Where they excel is underwater. You have no elerium--use of elerium is internationally banned, very few governments have access to it and X-Com can't touch the stuff. Alien alloys have problems when they contact water, so they're available but not always the perfect structural material for every use.

The water problem is not an issue for your flying subs, those rely on the alloys for their high performance on both elements. They simply have layered plating to protect the alloys from the water.

Your coelacanths do alright; the extra plating bulks them up a bit but the alloys lighten them and improve engine performance, ultimately enabling your underwater tanks to perform similarly to the land tanks at the start of the first game.

You can use power armor made from alien alloys on land, or thick alloy diving suits underwater. The diving suits, however, are bulked up a lot by all the extra plating required to protect such a small object from all that water, thus while it's available at the start, it's bulky, unwieldy, and expensive. Once you get underwater, you'll have to make a critical decision whether you'd rather have big armor or better movement.

If possible, I'd like to decrease soldier's time units while in water. The aliens, of course, will move the same on land as in water. Lore-wise, they'd be more comfortable in water but air is just thinner and they're pretty much all benthic so ultimately they won't be slowed by being in air. The exceptions are only in those that can't be on land anyway.

I'm thinking your starter equipment for land combat will include:
Powerful and fast interceptor, slower than old firestorm because it does not use elerium
Fast transport which can carry a sizable crew, good for getting to terror sites
A full range of laser weapons, significantly improved over designs from the first war
Power armor, exceptional defensive capability, no flying (no elerium) (it's a lot like Megapol Armor)
Heavily-armored tanks with potent weaponry such as explosives or lasers

Underwater your best equipment will not be as strong:
Barracuda - capable of both air and water pursuit but not the best speed or range
Triton - can touchdown on land or sea, carries a moderate troop complement and is slow
Harpoon guns are slow and weak but can fire underwater
Dye grenades provide cover
Chem flares are essential for night missions as well as deep missions, dark underwater combat will be very common
Light diving suit has no significant armor but grants best mobility possible
Heavy diving suit has good armor but is pretty sluggish and fairly expensive

If necessary, I'll make land items simply not work underwater. However, there's more nuanced approaches I'd prefer to take:
Gas/Hydro-Jet Cannon and Torpedo Launcher fire straight underwater but have arcing shot on land
Lasers do reduced damage in water
Guns don't work in water at all
Explosives have a smaller explosion radius in water
Some armor types can't be taken into water--aquanauts will simply wear light diving suit if you forget to give them water armor
Land tanks work in water but have greatly reduced time units
Certain alien units are designed for land and are exceptionally strong on land, but are not seen underwater usually (like deep ones, bio-drones, triscenes) - these will actually provide some threat in terror sites - lobstermen are powerful on both land and in water


Floating bases will have a higher cost than underground bases, so your base construction and maintenance costs will be more significant. Your sonars will be plenty effective, however, and you'll have patrol craft available right from the start. Finding the aliens might be a bit easier than before, while getting to them may be a bit harder. I'm interested in a couple things:
1.) More of the ocean is deep. Many times you shoot something down, you can't reach it in the Triton and have to research better diving ships.
2.) Deep alien subs should be harder to detect.

If any of you know how to accomplish some of these more difficult things, let me know. There is a very good chance I'll have to make this in OXCE+.
« Last Edit: December 13, 2017, 09:14:44 am by The Reaver of Darkness »

Offline Solarius Scorch

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Re: Ideas for my TFTD megamod
« Reply #1 on: December 13, 2017, 12:11:42 pm »
This is a very exciting plan. I can't say I disagree with any point.

However, at least some features are currently unfeasible even with OXCE+. Examples include air interception in TFTD and changing weapons properties by environment. So you would have to convince our coders to add these functions... They are versatile functions though, useful for any mod, so I think they're perfectly viable for requesting.

Offline The Reaver of Darkness

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Re: Ideas for my TFTD megamod
« Reply #2 on: December 13, 2017, 06:18:57 pm »
I was thinking of requesting a generalized function for all battlescape equipment to allow the player to assign two attribute values to any one attribute, one for land and one for sea, but I don't know how coding works and what constraints there are on coding such a thing. Do you think that could be done? Maybe a comma, space, and second value. First value declares in water, second on land. If no second value is declared, it's the same both ways.

Code: [Select]
  - type: STR_LASER_RIFLE
    power: 30, 60
« Last Edit: December 13, 2017, 06:21:31 pm by The Reaver of Darkness »

Offline Solarius Scorch

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Re: Ideas for my TFTD megamod
« Reply #3 on: December 13, 2017, 10:51:47 pm »
I was thinking of requesting a generalized function for all battlescape equipment to allow the player to assign two attribute values to any one attribute, one for land and one for sea, but I don't know how coding works and what constraints there are on coding such a thing. Do you think that could be done? Maybe a comma, space, and second value. First value declares in water, second on land. If no second value is declared, it's the same both ways.

Code: [Select]
  - type: STR_LASER_RIFLE
    power: 30, 60

I personally feel it would be better to use an item swap (STR_ITEM_XXX becomes STR_ITEM_YYY underwater). There are two reasons:
1) That's how armour swap works, so doing this in the same way would be consistent.
2) It would give you more control over what happens when swapped - you can change any value of the weapon.

Of course it also means more code, which is a hassle, but in my opinion it is still the better option.

Offline chaosshade

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Re: Ideas for my TFTD megamod
« Reply #4 on: December 14, 2017, 04:20:32 am »
I'm working on a sub combat rebalance, catch me on the Discord (or IRC) if you wanna talk about it (and want access to the messy beta version)

Offline The Reaver of Darkness

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Re: Ideas for my TFTD megamod
« Reply #5 on: December 14, 2017, 06:20:38 am »
I'll be there!

Offline Blank

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Re: Ideas for my TFTD megamod
« Reply #6 on: December 15, 2017, 06:18:10 am »
I think you've got the right idea, especially since you've put thought into balancing the old land tech so it actually serves a purpose beyond steamrolling early gillmen terror sites. May I humbly suggest chryssalids in early terror missions? If xcom get to keep their fancy equipment then it seems only fair that these most hated enemies remain as an infestation on earth. I think the biggest question is psychics; why there aren't over-powered psy-agents running around, why the deep sea creatures must be immune to it if it isnt being used, and why 'molecular control' does the exact same thing somehow. My personal preference is to just use psychics and have it unlocked from the start but heavily reworked mechanically in the way some existing mods do.

I had been thinking about extensive mods for tftd about a year ago. I have fond memories of the original because of the mechanical improvements; difficulty bug fixed, alien grenade spam, melee, heavy plasma equivalent not being the be all end all. But all that and more can and has been done for ufo now leaving the inconsistencies of tftd all the more glaring. So I do think it could do with a drastic change of pace in early game to make it it's own thing.

Offline The Reaver of Darkness

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Re: Ideas for my TFTD megamod
« Reply #7 on: December 15, 2017, 11:22:35 am »
I wouldn't put chryssalids in. They're one of those thigns that is so threatening either we die or they die. There is no way they survive to 2040 unless it's in a place where they can't get to us and are suddenly released in 2040. I'd rather just leave them out. Tentaculats are an even greater threat anyway, they may be a bit squishier but they can fly. Flying was the old cheese defense against chryssalids.

There are some re-named things in TFTD that I want to take back to the old name. There's no reason to research particle disturbance sensor when we already have motion scanner. There's no reason to re-research medikit when we already have it. Now molecular control may work on different fundamentals, so I'm not necessarily going to scrap it entirely and return to psionics. I would, however, like to give X-Com psionic power at the start. Psi-amps require elerium so you won't have those, but psi-labs do not require elerium so the technology won't be mysteriously absent. I'm not sure what I'll do with it. I need to think on this some more. Since the aliens are clearly connected with the aliens from the first war, I might just go all the way over to psionics. If I do, that probably means you can build a psi-lab at your base and assess your psi-defense right away, and train your aquanauts to better resist psi attacks. Maybe the aliens have stronger psionics, or are less reliant on them. One way or another it'll still be balanced for a good game.



I just had an idea: what if the "flying subs" you start with are actually just subs that can drive on land? That way they could be given a much lower speed, and it could make it very difficult to catch alien subs in the water. This low speed makes sense as water offers far more resistance than air. Maybe the aliens should be slower, too. Air-only aircraft might be feasible by setting their maximum depth to nothing at all, thus they can only engage USOs while over land, but otherwise they are fast and can patrol the globe easily.

I really wish there was a way to make it harder to detect craft in the water than on land.

Offline Blank

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Re: Ideas for my TFTD megamod
« Reply #8 on: December 15, 2017, 01:20:59 pm »
One solution I thought of for the problem of no air interceptions is a concept of alien subs traveling  through a network of subterranean tunnels. Even if xcom craft were being hauled over land, surely the local governments should have technologically improved fighter designs? But then detecting them at all won't make sense. It might be possible to modify the map way points to reduce the chances of alien craft traveling over land but it's been a while since I looking into that (I did modify some of the zones for balance, if I can dig out my old computer for the files I'll send them)

Molecular control seems to be based around chips;. Personally I see the tasoth as the ultimate molecular control result: they're just sacks of goo until a single chip turns it into an inteligent and dangerous creature. Xcom implants their own chips into their aquanauts which allows them to hack the aliens control network. Except the aliens use mc attacks on unchipped aquanauts which is when it starts to get confusing. It could be that xcom start with nerfed non-elerium based psi-amps and need to research m.c. tech to get better ones that work on chipped aliens. There's a case for capping aquanauts psi-strength due to anti alien bias against psychically strong humans being suspected hybrids (indeed, depending on how far back the alien infiltration goes those super psi-soldiers of the first xcom may have been partial hybrids). You lose the surprise of finding out your best soldiers are terribly vulnerable to psionics though.

Offline The Reaver of Darkness

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Re: Ideas for my TFTD megamod
« Reply #9 on: December 15, 2017, 03:14:43 pm »
One solution I thought of for the problem of no air interceptions is a concept of alien subs traveling  through a network of subterranean tunnels.
That's brilliant! If they're in tunnels underground, they'll be hard to detect. They could just be always hard to detect.

Now I just need a way to say they're underground as opposed to airborne, while your craft actually go airborne--or possibly driving on land.

Alien ships are slower than in first war, but your ships are WAY slower and they have a massive speed advantage. You have excellent radar coverage of the globe but your chance of detection is very low, so you must research better detection chance. You get the high tech but it's still very difficult. I like it!

Offline Nord

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Re: Ideas for my TFTD megamod
« Reply #10 on: December 24, 2017, 03:57:28 pm »
Aliens in tunnels... it is look like an XCOM 3.
Horrific threats from underground...
Digging interceptors...
A great field for fantasy.