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you can actually download a beta to see the spinning geoscape!

Most excellent, most excellent news.

Sea Skimmer wrote:Most excellent, most excellent news.

Yeah, I had all kinds of ideas for an XCOM remake like:

I want to be able to get upgrades for my current weapons.

For example...I've got this 7.62mm rifle and I research a 40mm grenade
launcher to add to it.

Then I can research specialized anti-alien rounds for my rifle or
grenade launcher.

EX:

Hydra-Shok bullets -very lethal in stopping organics.
APDS (Armor Piercing Discarding Sabot) bullets - Similar to tank main
gun rounds (Great Armor penetration)

And as I research more alien alloys, I can create better APDS
penetrators; ie:

Tungsten
Depleted Uranium
Alien Alloy #1
Alien Alloy #2

For the Grenade Launcher,

HE round
HEAT (High Explosive Anti-Tank) round; uses a flame jet to cut through
armor.
Nerve Gas rounds
Incendary Rounds
White Phosporous Rounds (smoke) but *Great* antipersonnel effects,
too!
Improved HE round (using better tech) bigger bang
Alien Tech HE round (using modified alien tech) even bigger bang

And I can also research other enhancements that improve accuracy and
vision:

IR Sight
Laser Sight (the cool little red dot; also shows up on IR sights as a
line)
Ballistics computer
Target Recognition AI

Well, you get the Idea. Have every weapon be able to be upgraded to
retain it's lethality as the aliens introduce deadlier guns, and
create more alien spinoff tech, such as Rail Guns, Plasma Miniguns (60
rounds a *second!*)

------------------------------------------------

One of the biggest problems in the game was arming your people with HE
rounds - if you suddenly came across an enemy right in front of you,
you couldn't shoot because you'd kill yourself as well.

A current US Army experimental weapon is aimed at fixing this
problem. It's called the Objective Individual Combat Weapon (OICW).
It's basically a 5.56mm assault rifle combined with a 20mm cannon. It
costs a _lot_, since it has a thermal sight, ballistics computer,
video camera, electronic compass, an automatic target tracker, and a
laser rangefinder all built-in, not as add-ons.

The coolest feature of this weapon is the variable fuzing for it's
20mm HE round. The fuze is set electronically by the weapon's
ballistics computer before the round is fired.

What does all this technobabble mean for the average X-COM trooper?

A lot. Let's say for example, that you want to clear a suspicious
building with HE. With Autocannons, etc. you have to shoot through a
window or door, or make your own entrance, which wasted shells.

With the OICW, you just set the fuze on the shell to have a slight
delay between impact (when the shell hits something) and explosion,
and then fire at the building's wall. The delay allows the round to
punch through the wall before exploding inside the building. With
longer delays, you can punch through the building's inner walls to
clear different rooms.

(A nice side effect is this: If a Sectoid is standing directly in
front of another Sectoid, you could program the round to have a delay
of 1/200th of a second after impact, so the round would punch through
the first Sectoid and kill him, then explode in the second one's
face.)

Another fuzing option is a time/distance delay. This utilizes the
laser rangefinder. Say, you just saw a Sectoid scurry through that
forest? No problem, even if you don't know where he is now. Just use
the rangefinder to get the distance to a tree near where you saw him
(100 feet) . The computer automatically fuzes the round so that it'll
detonate 'x' seconds after being fired, so it explodes after it's
traveled 100 feet from the muzzle. This reduces the chances of 'wild'
shots that don't hit anything and fly off the battlescape to zero, and
allows you to more efficently clear forests, etc. with HE.

Another option is to disarm the HE, so you can use it as a 'normal' AP
round. It wouldn't get the armor penetration or power of a
purpose-built AP round, but it's better than firing HE at point-blank
range

The round, of course, can be set to detonate on impact, like a HE
round from an Autocannon.

The 20mm cannon is accurate to about 1,000 meters, and with the
computer, you'd probably hit something at that range. If this weapon
is put into X-COM 6, make it cost about $250,000 and give a 20 point
bonus in accuracy and vision to the soldier using it.

I really think that Tanks/APCs should be included in X-COM 6 as well.

Make a cheap, fast APC that holds 6 troops and allows them to move
across the battlescape without using up their TUs and protecting them
from enemy fire. Have a .50 cal HMG on the top of it. A guy would have
to open the hatch and stand up, exposed to enemy fire to use it, it
would only be able to be fired once a turn, but it would fire in
bursts of 100 rounds, and be capable of penetrating bodies, walls,
trees, steel...you get the idea. As you research alien tech, make
upgrades for it, such as more powerful engines, (more TUs for the
APC), better armor, and also have completely new APCs based on alien
tech.

An expensive, moderately fast IFV (Infantry Fighting Vehicle) could be
made that holds 2-3 troops, and incorporates heavier armor than the
APC. Have it mount a 20mm autocannon that fires both AP and HE in 70
round bursts, and include night vision, ballistics computers, as well
as a guided missile launcher on the side of the turret.

Same kind of upgrades as you have for the APCs, and also allow new
weapons to be invented for the turret. Make the new weapons have
tradeoffs.

For example: Your 30mm cannon's AP round can't kill the latest aliens
you're going up against, even with the latest ammo technology. Have
two solutions:

1.) make a more powerful 30mm cannon (longer barrel and cartridge case
= more muzzle velocity) which allows you to carry the same amount of
ammo for it that the less powerful cannon had, as well have the same
rate of fire. But, due to the higher muzzle velocity, the HE rounds'
cases have to be thicker to resist the greater forces, which means
less HE power than the older 30mm cannon.

2.) Or, you could make a bigger gun, such as a 50mm cannon, that would
improve both AP and HE. The drawbacks would be: you carry less ammo,
since the rounds are bigger, and you have a slower rate of fire.

But, new technologies could fix the problem: You could develop a
variable-velocity Electromagnetic Gun (railgun) that would accelerate
AP rounds to high velocities, but accelerate HE rounds to much slower
velocities, solving the problem, without unacceptable compromises.
However, it would be costly.

The APC would take up the space of 3 HWPs, while the IFV would take up
the space of 4 HWPs.

Have two-man tankettes, that take up the same amount of space that
HWPs did in XCOM 1 & 2. Give them armor equivalent to the IFV and have
them carry the same ammo load, but in a much smaller and faster
package (don't have to carry infantry). Have several variants, such as
a cannon armed one (but with multiple gun options, i.e. a machine gun,
minigun, 20mm cannon, 30mm cannon, 75mm cannon, etc.), a missile armed
one, and an engineer tank; have it mount a HE-only 75mm cannon for
demolitions work, and a flamethrower that shoots flame 150 feet (make
infantry ones shoot flame 50 feet.)

What do you think of my ideas?

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Have two types of rocket launchers available for use by X-COM troopers
at the beginning of the game.

LAW - This would be a simple, cheap, and powerful weapon ala the
rocket launcher from UFO. It would be unguided at first, but if you
researched advanced laser technology, you could add a laser guidance
unit to the rocket, which would allow 99% accuracy but at the cost of
a small amount of HE and a higher unit cost. The laser designator
would be added to the launcher, or could be carried by a different
soldier as a "Target Designator Unit". Of course, the laser guidance
would be completely ineffective if there was smoke between the
launcher and the target. The aliens could develop anti-laser systems
to incorporate into their armor, which if they detected a laser beam
being shone onto them, would automatically trigger a smoke grenade
launcher, covering the alien in a protective screen of smoke which
defeats the laser.

TARGET DESIGNATOR UNIT - This is a handheld system that a soldier
could carry that would incorporate both a laser designator effective
at longer ranges than the one used by the LAW, and a millimetric-wave
radar to guide the Predator missile. It would allow OVR (Outside
Visual Range) firings by both the LAW and Predator missiles with a
high degree of accuracy. Imagine this, a soldier on the second story
of a building 'paints' a sectoid he sees with his TDU's laser or
radar. On the other side of the battlescape, a trooper lifts his
missile launcher and fires it in the general direction of the alien.
The missile picks up the laser/radar beam from the TDU and follows it
to whatever's being painted. BOOM! Scratch one Sectoid! Of course,
like the Predator system, if you use it's radar, you'll basically be
holding the equivalent of a giant neon sign saying "Shoot Me! Shoot
Me!" if the aliens have good detection gear in the field.

PREDATOR - The ultimate in X-COM handheld guided missiles. It
incorporates a dual-warhead system that has a HEAT (anti-armor) charge
in front of a normal HE warhead. It allows the soldier to have a
choice between AP and HE rounds in the same missile, and is selected
just before launch. It incorporates a revolutionary millimetric-wave
radar unit into the launcher. When the soldier wishes to fire the
missile, he first activicates the MW-unit, which gives him a rough
picture of the surrounding terrain and buildings and organic
lifeforms. (once you've done an autopsy of a alien race, the missiles'
radar will recognize that race on radar by it's unique radar
signature.) He them selects an impact point, and fires the missile.
Shortly after launch, the missile activicates it's onboard
millimetric-wave radar head and uses sosiphicated AI to manuver itself
around obstacles to get to it's designated impact point. A significant
drawback to this system is that when the soldier turns on the radar
unit on the launcher to get targeting information, he shows up on
enemy detection systems like a sore thumb.

'SNOOPER' FAMILY OF ELECTRONIC WARFARE GEAR- This is basically an
outgrowth of the Motion Detector of the original UFO. This technology
goes through several stages. At the beginning, it can only pick up
moving things. Later, it can tell if it's a human or alien. As you do
autopsies on aliens, and research better IR technology, the detector
will tell you the species of alien. As advanced as this is over the
orginial Motion Detectors from UFO and TFTD, these are just the
handheld units. The really *hot* stuff is the big, backpack-sized gear
that costs a lot. They have longer ranges than the handheld ones, but
this isn't why they're so *hot*. As the technology of alien weapons
becomes known, your EW trooper, with his backpack unit, can pinpoint
alien weapons fire and tell your people what kind of weapons the
aliens are using and where they are. He can also pick up alien
transmissions to pinpoint the location of the UFO, as well as pick up
enemy radar transmissions. The full-sized unit also has two modes,
passive, and active. In 'Passive' mode, it only picks up aliens when
they shoot their weapons, or get close, and especially if they use
active sensors, and displays the data on a grid showing the direction
and distance to the contact. In 'Active' mode, your EW trooper can
pick up aliens at long ranges, and it displays the location of the
aliens on a radar map of the surroundings. A feature of this unit is
that it can be 'data-linked' to OVR weapons so that Predator and
LAW-carrying troopers can shoot their missiles at enemy weapons fire
or emissions. Of course, the aliens have their own EW people, so the
tables are pretty even. This would add a good element of strategy to
the game; when and when not to use active sensors. It could also
influence weapons choices: chemically-powered weapons (bullets,
rockets) wouldn't show up on the scope, but antimatter-powered/energy
weapons would show up.

INTIMIDATOR AIR-DEPLOYABLE MINE - This is essentially a 'smart'
proximity grenade that can be deployed by launching it from mortars,
Predators, etc. At a set range from the launching unit, it's separated
from the rocket/whatever, and lands on the ground. It then rights
itself using several legs. It begans scanning for targets. When it
detects a target within range, it swivels it's top to point towards
the target and launches a munition at the target. With the basic Mark
One, Mod Zero unit, It fires on *any* target, and doesn't discriminate
between aliens and humans, and it lands within a 4-5 square radius of
the target and uses regular HE. Later versions can discriminate
between aliens and humans and land within a 2-3 radius. The final,
ultimate version can tell which type of alien it is and launches a
dual-munition warhead which is configured before firing by the IR
sensor of the mine (HE for normal aliens, HEAT for Chrysalids,
Sectopods, and Cyberdisks) and has a CEP (circular error probability)
of zero, which means it always lands on it's target. This is a
single-use weapon. If you want to have a better idea of how it looks
and works...look up the US Military's HORNET mine.

SUBMUNITION WARHEADS - Have cluster munition warheads for most of the
rockets/cannons, etc. They would cover an area about 2-4 times bigger
than normal HE warheads, but would only inflict enough damage to wound
enemies. Make those bug-eyed Sectoids bleed to death from a stomach
wound!

BETTER ARMOR - As someone else (god bless 'em!) suggested, make armor
thick enough to withstand direct hits from large caliber weapons, and
supply them to both sides (X-COM and the Aliens). We wanna throw large
quantities of firepower around!

SPECIALIZED ARMOR - This idea isn't new. Most SWAT, Special Forces
teams give the third guy in the door/window/etc. much heavier armor
than the other guys since by the time he's in, the enemy will have
recovered from the inital shock and begun to shoot back. In a similar
vein, don't you have aliens killing your guys as soon as they step
into UFOs? Well, don't cry, just give them "Breaching" armor. This
armor would have 2-3 times the armor of other types of armor but would
be slower. It would allow your people to step through doors with the
confidence that their armor can stop whatever the enemy throws at
them.

FLAMETHROWERS - They're just so damn cool!

X-COM BATTLE IDEAS

It'd be nice to have variable-size battles. We could have small,
12-man battles with the aliens over a shot-down UFO, and on the next
turn, have a massive assault force consisting of 100 troopers and 4-5
supporting tanks/APCs/IFVs assault a vital alien outpost/installation.
We certainly have the CPU power and the memory to do this today. Hell,
if XCOM: UFO managed to do 24 man battles aganst a force of about 20
aliens on a 486 with 4 megs of memory, imagine what we can do with a
Pentium 233 and 32MB of RAM! Since it's turn based, there's no real
strain on the CPU, and the game only slows down when the CPU is doing
it's turn.

[NOTE: Since I wrote this, computing power has doubled, and with 3d
accelerator cards and 64MB ram becoming more and more common,
well, can we say 200 X-COM troopers and supporting arms
(Tanks/APCs/airstrikes/artillery) versus 200 Sectoids and 35
Sectopods?]

Hmm...since they (MPS) say the game is gonna be space based, hows this
for an Idea? Has anyone here seen Starship Troopers? We could have
gigantic Ticonderoga Space Stations to act as bases, and use the
Rodger Young-class ships to send soldiers to other planets.

Hows this for a mission?

<BEGIN TRANSMISSION>
The Colony world of Ufuckayorkay is under heavy attack by alien
forces. We need Immediate assistance! Please send hel...ARRGHH!
<TRANSMISSION TERMINATED AT SOURCE>

You could load up a Rodger Young ship with a squadron of TacFighters,
a lot of soldiers and their equipment and send them to the colony.

Once there, you could fight a space battle ala Master of Orion 2 style
with the alien fleet orbiting the planet, while at the same time,
sending down drop ships to the surface of the planet. Figure each
dropship holds about 25 vict..err..soldiers! A force of 5 dropships
could be your primary attacking force. Once on the ground, you could
launch a assault for control of the main city on the colony, with your
troops supported by tanks and occasional airstrikes by TacFighters.

It would be fun, to say the least; and a big change from the previous
X-COMs.

Also have random events during battles; have UFOs power up their drive
systems to try to escape, but your people, if theyre inside, they can
kill the pilot and make the UFO crash again Or maybe, if the UFO
was badly damaged in the crash, have a *second* UFO full of
technicians and replacement parts for the first arrive sometime in the
middle of the battle or after you've vanquished the crew of the first
UFO. You could also, if you're getting your ass kicked, call for
reinforcements, and have a second planeload of troopers arrive in a
turn or two.

Maybe have missions where your people are surrounded by the aliens,
and your objective is to keep as many of your people alive until your
ride home arrives.

And, howabout missions on airless asteroids, on the surface of a
desert planet in a howling sandstorm, at 5,000 feet underwater; each
requiring their own specialized armor/suit?

Comments, Please.

Options for Cybernetic repair for wounded operatives, Of course when you get a walking tank run by a brain that used to be one of your officers code typing to the diognostics labs the following:
KILL ME!
KILL ME!
KILL ME!

(Except that that's all thats showing on the screen, you can imagine it, If I did it Dalton would be pissed)
Then this may be a bad idea.

Fucking geniuses these guys using NVidia specific extensions. Why the fuck you need register combiners to render the geoscape I have NO idea.

I wouldn't mind seeing a few special bits and pieces like:

Radar flare - use it to call in fire support like a nuclear artillery barrage or to bring in transports right on top of you.

Mines - pressure, sensor and manually triggered.

Multiple teams per mission - back up, containment teams etc

AI/NPC chars - militias and guerillas in the hills that might fight with or against you depending on how you treat them. Also nasty horrid bad people like "Black Book"/"Garnet" who are out to aid the aliens and have really well trained forces and really good tech.

Crazy_Vasey wrote:Fucking geniuses these guys using NVidia specific extensions. Why the fuck you need register combiners to render the geoscape I have NO idea.

Maybe because NVIDIA is the standard, not ATI with their garbage drivers?

MKSheppard wrote:

Crazy_Vasey wrote:Fucking geniuses these guys using NVidia specific extensions. Why the fuck you need register combiners to render the geoscape I have NO idea.

Maybe because NVIDIA is the standard, not ATI with their garbage drivers?

For fucks sake. Just over half the market != standard. Not that it matters, why the fuck do you need the rough equivalent of pixel shaders to render a sphere? A simple bump map could have done the trick looking at that screeny and would have worked on a lot more cards.

ATIs driver quality is so irrelevant to this I have no idea why you brought it up. Just for for your information I've been using my Radeon 9500 for about 6 weeks now and had no problems at all.

MKSheppard wrote:

Crazy_Vasey wrote:Fucking geniuses these guys using NVidia specific extensions. Why the fuck you need register combiners to render the geoscape I have NO idea.

Maybe because NVIDIA is the standard, not ATI with their garbage drivers?

Times change, Shep. Or do you forget the days when 3dfx and GLIDE ruled supreme with this little upstart called nVidia? They didn't have hot drivers either, you know. My R8500LE is rock-solid on my computer (Catalyst 3.0).

Standards? nVidia's extentions are not a standard. OpenGL is a standard. Direct3D is a standard (abliet a proprietary one). ATI and nVidia's extentions and languages are not standards/

phongn wrote: Standards? nVidia's extentions are not a standard. OpenGL is a standard. Direct3D is a standard (abliet a proprietary one). ATI and nVidia's extentions and languages are not standards/

Then why does NVIDIA support such little things as TABLE FOG, which
means I can play Combat Mission Barbarossa to Berlin with fogging,
while with an ATI card, I get none?

Oooohh!! XCOM.

Drool

I can't wait for this one...

MKSheppard wrote:

phongn wrote: Standards? nVidia's extentions are not a standard. OpenGL is a standard. Direct3D is a standard (abliet a proprietary one). ATI and nVidia's extentions and languages are not standards/

Then why does NVIDIA support such little things as TABLE FOG, which
means I can play Combat Mission Barbarossa to Berlin with fogging,
while with an ATI card, I get none?

Radeon cards support table fog, but you have to use a registry tweak.

http://www.rage3d.com/radeon/reg/index2.shtml

Might have changed now because I haven't noticed any games fog behaving strangely and I haven't made any registry tweaks.

Crazy_Vasey wrote: Radeon cards support table fog, but you have to use a registry tweak.

OMG, I have to haXor my registry! Screw that!

MKSheppard wrote:

Crazy_Vasey wrote: Radeon cards support table fog, but you have to use a registry tweak.

OMG, I have to haXor my registry! Screw that!

Oooh, adding one (or modifying) a key is so difficult!

phongn wrote: Oooh, adding one (or modifying) a key is so difficult!

I'm lazy. It should work out of the box, and not require hackcing
your registry.

MKSheppard wrote:

phongn wrote: Standards? nVidia's extentions are not a standard. OpenGL is a standard. Direct3D is a standard (abliet a proprietary one). ATI and nVidia's extentions and languages are not standards/

Then why does NVIDIA support such little things as TABLE FOG, which
means I can play Combat Mission Barbarossa to Berlin with fogging,
while with an ATI card, I get none?

1. ATI supports table fog, though why it isn't activated by default is odd.
2. You're evading my question. If CMBB used a proprietary extention it doesn't mean that said feature is a standard!

You might as well say that nVidia and ATI cards suck because they don't support GLIDE, or the GF2 sucked because it didn't support environmental bump mapping at the time when the G400 was released.

phongn wrote: 2. You're evading my question. If CMBB used a proprietary extention it doesn't mean that said feature is a standard!

European Air War anyone?

KICK ASS!

Happy happy joy joy happy happy joy joy

KICK ASS!

Happy happy joy joy happy happy joy joy

MKSheppard wrote:

phongn wrote: Oooh, adding one (or modifying) a key is so difficult!

I'm lazy. It should work out of the box, and not require hackcing
your registry.

Sorta like expecting Windows to work right out of the box without having to hack at something or download a critical security patch or some similar nonsense. Then again, I only say this because I'm not lazy. If I can improve something by tweaking the registry, I'm all for it.