Reported Sightings

[pmprog]

One thing I thought might be an interesting addition to the Geoscape is kind of like a news feed that pops up saying things like "UFO sighted over South Asia", not all the time, and doesn't show you where the UFo actually is - you'd have to send a craft out and use it's radar.

It just seemed a little weird to me that being in charge of saving the world, surely somebody would call you up when they see a UFO.

[anonilsus]

It is 1999. No twitter, no crowd-sourcing. People aren't connected

"Look, an ufo! Let's make a webpage, quick, open Frontpage 98!"

[pmprog]

It is 1999. No twitter, no crowd-sourcing. People aren't connected

I don't know about where you live, but we had telephones in 1999 England

[Sharp]

well you have the graph!

[luke83]

How about some Simcity style newspapers from time to time Even MIB used newspapers to track there aliens

[R]

This is a fun idea! It would liven up the game a bit. 

[moriarty]

I like the idea of UFO sightings. UFO extender (I think) had an option where UFOs could randomly crash while on a mission - that was a nice idea, too: some founding nation calls you to investigate a UFO crash in their territory.

maybe we could include both options as probability values:
UFOCrashProbability - for every undetected UFO, every hour, game checks against this, if check successful, UFO crashes and crashsite warning pops up
UFOSightingProbability - for every undetected UFO, every hour, game checks against this, if check successful, pop-up notifies you "UFO has been sighted over %country"

what do you think?

[pmprog]

well you have the graph!

True, but I find them a bit too passive. If a UFO is hovering of Japan, for instance, you'll only find out at the end of the month.

I'm not saying you should be alerted to all UFOs, that would make the game too easy. Maybe implement it sort of like a global radar system that every 30 game minutes it has a 10% chance of detecting a UFO - and instead of displaying the UFO on the globe, it just indicates the region (maybe use a "shader" on the terrain or something, like turn it red, which resets before every "scan")

[moriarty]

great minds think alike, eh? 

[AMX]

True, but I find them a bit too passive. If a UFO is hovering of Japan, for instance, you'll only find out at the end of the month.

The activity graph is supposed to update every 30 minutes...

[xracer]

This is a fun idea! It would liven up the game a bit.

How about "a news like report" after all there were TV back on those days those were the main way to stay connected.
A few persons in *** city (or the name of a country) have reported a UFO sighting. Correspondent *** is on site interviewing the witnesses.

Since X-COM is a global entity getting news from other countries should be pretty feasible. And you can add some voice acting for the region for example if the new is from South America it could be done in Spanish or Portuguese (Brasil) you know using just the main languages in the world.

[pmprog]

The activity graph is supposed to update every 30 minutes...

Ah, you're right
https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php?title=UFO_Detection#UFO_Activity_Graph

I didn't know this, I suppose it makes sense. I still think something more obvious in the geoscape would be helpful

[Sharp]

Actually an overlay would be nice so you can visually see a representation of alien activity around the globe, like the areas defined in the graphs to be shown on geoscape with some shading to indicate reported alien activity. A bit like how XCOM 2012 does it but with alien activity instead of panic.

[moriarty]

this was suggested before: replacing or supplementing the graphs with a shaded globe. of course, this will be easier once we implement some kind of real shading, which will be only after a major graphics engine overhaul, which will be ... someday.

[R]

I thought the newspaper idea was more of an eye candy thing. 

1) It shows up after the ufo has left because it takes a day to be printed. 
2) It shows up after you have done a terror mission and applauds/scalds the player on his success/failure.

Making news reports warn the player of an UFO is a different idea altogether.