Harder Base Defense missions

[Hobbes]

This is something I've been thinking for the past days. Since it is fairly easy to defend from base defense missions on UFO if you correctly design your base I decided to throw in a few changes. It also fixes the Base Disjoint Bug.

 

You can get the mod here

 

I won't reveal much here in order not to spoil some surprises but here are a few things:

* Slight changes to the initial deployment areas of xcom and the aliens

* Light sources removed

* Map disposition changed to reduce the effectiveness of base layout strategies

 

I haven't done much playtesting so any comments would be appreciated. To install it, make a backup of the /MAPS and /ROUTES folders first, then unzip the file to your main UFO folder.

 

Then play the game and wait for the aliens to appear. And be afraid... very afraid...

 

Edit: Updated with version .02

[Bomb Bloke]

Modules with hanger doors (living quarters, labs, workshops) have a spawn node next to the east most door that can spawn large units (resulting in them sitting inside the door).

 

The stores (module 07) can spawn large units inside a wall at node 3.

 

Interrogation/psi-labs (modules 8/14) do the same at node 0. Shouldn't really spawn any large units in those modules at all in my opinion, given that there's no escape due to the small doors! Even if a large unit is in a module it can "technically" move from, if that module is surrounded by modules using single-tile doors for access, it's still stuck. Perhaps guarantee west/east access for large units? That way it'd be harder to box 'em in, though they'd likely still have to take detours on occasion.

 

Psi-labs are missing some wall tiles from their east-most edge. There's just uncovered dirt there.

[Hobbes]

Modules with hanger doors (living quarters, labs, workshops) have a spawn node next to the east most door that can spawn large units (resulting in them sitting inside the door).

 

The stores (module 07) can spawn large units inside a wall at node 3.

 

Interrogation/psi-labs (modules 8/14) do the same at node 0. Shouldn't really spawn any large units in those modules at all in my opinion, given that there's no escape due to the small doors! Even if a large unit is in a module it can "technically" move from, if that module is surrounded by modules using single-tile doors for access, it's still stuck. Perhaps guarantee west/east access for large units? That way it'd be harder to box 'em in, though they'd likely still have to take detours on occasion.

 

Psi-labs are missing some wall tiles from their east-most edge. There's just uncovered dirt there.

 

Thanks for the feedback BB. I've fixed all of those issues you mentioned. Concerning the modules 8 and 14 I've simply set all nodes for small units. The link on the post is now updated with the new version.

 

Any comments about the playability?

[Bomb Bloke]

My idea of a base layout is to stick modules where ever the mouse lands, trying to leave 2x2 areas free in case I feel like adding some more hangers later. In defense, this usually allows me to attack from all sides (preferably the one the enemy isn't facing), instead of relying on bottlenecks to control enemy traffic (I don't like to give them time to move in the first place). This new design seems aimed at preventing the bottleneck strategy completely, so I'm probably not the best one to comment on it...

 

The base that got attacked had two hangers, one of which was next to the access lift. It also had eight flying troopers and nine plasma tanks, giving me "just a bit" of an advantage, so I decided to put away the psi-amps and explosives before facing the invading Mutons.

 

One of my guys got offed while storming the hangers (he ran out of time units and couldn't retreat behind the cover of a door, so he simply got fryed during the alien's turn. My stupid fault, shoulda moved him back before he started firing).

 

I had some weirdness in the access lift. I sent about six tanks over there and surrounded it on all sides. Let the aliens take a turn, they opened the west door (revealing about three or four mutons and a celatid), sent a few shots out, so on my go I attacked from the opposite side. Killed everything in sight, but the game insisted there was still another target in there - the indicator was there, the blue dot on the radar was there, he just wasn't visible on the screen. So during the alien turn he got to take down not one but two tanks, before becoming visible and getting squashed on my next go. Don't see how that could've had anything to do with the map design though.

 

Had a bit of trouble finding the last two aliens. Eventually they popped up under my interrogation chamber (the only two away from the hangers/access lift) after one decided to use his blaster launcher (killing himself instantly in the process). I think he was trying to shoot it through a single tile door that the other alien had just gone through, but whatever happened, it didn't work out for him and the other was in front of a hovertank, so that was the end of him too.

 

To sum up, I reckon I found it a bit easier then the usual defense - too many doors! You open one then duck back behind it again. Blast away, and the door promptly shuts for the alien turn - since half your opponents spawn in the hangers, they need to run anywhere up to around fifteen tiles to open the doors themselves, by which time their time units run out and they're sitting ducks. Instead they elect to stay relatively still while you gather your forces - get a few soldiers behind one door and you can guess what happens (free time units since half your guys don't need to move behind cover any more). In the meantime, you don't need to worry about getting sniped down a hallway because yet more doors segment all the modules.

 

And here I can't get one lousy door to work in the Lightning map...

 

The access lift probably would've been a blood bath for me if I hadn't sent so many tanks over there, though. As it was, I was incredibly lucky not to lose a couple before I rushed in (the damage ended up spread out amongst the squadron)... And then unlucky when the phantom alien got his free kills afterwards.

 

Unfortunately the lack of light sources makes no differences. To affect soldier sight, light levels need to be from 10-15, but the ambient light level in the base is 8, so you get your full vision range.

[Hobbes]

My idea of a base layout is to stick modules where ever the mouse lands, trying to leave 2x2 areas free in case I feel like adding some more hangers later. In defense, this usually allows me to attack from all sides (preferably the one the enemy isn't facing), instead of relying on bottlenecks to control enemy traffic (I don't like to give them time to move in the first place). This new design seems aimed at preventing the bottleneck strategy completely, so I'm probably not the best one to comment on it...

 

The base that got attacked had two hangers, one of which was next to the access lift. It also had eight flying troopers and nine plasma tanks, giving me "just a bit" of an advantage, so I decided to put away the psi-amps and explosives before facing the invading Mutons.

 

One of my guys got offed while storming the hangers (he ran out of time units and couldn't retreat behind the cover of a door, so he simply got fryed during the alien's turn. My stupid fault, shoulda moved him back before he started firing).

 

I had some weirdness in the access lift. I sent about six tanks over there and surrounded it on all sides. Let the aliens take a turn, they opened the west door (revealing about three or four mutons and a celatid), sent a few shots out, so on my go I attacked from the opposite side. Killed everything in sight, but the game insisted there was still another target in there - the indicator was there, the blue dot on the radar was there, he just wasn't visible on the screen. So during the alien turn he got to take down not one but two tanks, before becoming visible and getting squashed on my next go. Don't see how that could've had anything to do with the map design though.

 

The missing alien appears because of too many objects present in the game. Normally the muton would be stunned by the hit but since there isn't room for its body it remains awake. When you kill it the body will simply disappear.

 

Had a bit of trouble finding the last two aliens. Eventually they popped up under my interrogation chamber (the only two away from the hangers/access lift) after one decided to use his blaster launcher (killing himself instantly in the process). I think he was trying to shoot it through a single tile door that the other alien had just gone through, but whatever happened, it didn't work out for him and the other was in front of a hovertank, so that was the end of him too.

 

To sum up, I reckon I found it a bit easier then the usual defense - too many doors! You open one then duck back behind it again. Blast away, and the door promptly shuts for the alien turn - since half your opponents spawn in the hangers, they need to run anywhere up to around fifteen tiles to open the doors themselves, by which time their time units run out and they're sitting ducks. Instead they elect to stay relatively still while you gather your forces - get a few soldiers behind one door and you can guess what happens (free time units since half your guys don't need to move behind cover any more). In the meantime, you don't need to worry about getting sniped down a hallway because yet more doors segment all the modules.

 

The idea behind the doors was to restrict usage of Blaster Launchers. I might reconsider it based on your account.

 

And here I can't get one lousy door to work in the Lightning map...

 

The access lift probably would've been a blood bath for me if I hadn't sent so many tanks over there, though. As it was, I was incredibly lucky not to lose a couple before I rushed in (the damage ended up spread out amongst the squadron)... And then unlucky when the phantom alien got his free kills afterwards.

 

Unfortunately the lack of light sources makes no differences. To affect soldier sight, light levels need to be from 10-15, but the ambient light level in the base is 8, so you get your full vision range.

 

I knew about the light but I thought that the reduced light would give a better atmosphere. I've been wondering if the ambient light in the bases is affected by the geoscape (why make tiles that give light otherwise?)

[Bomb Bloke]

Ah, so that explains the phantom alien - I guess that's something I really shoulda known about by now... Anyway, my item table was indeed packed to the gills (mostly with spare laser rifles, for some reason).

 

In the MCD files, it looks like light sources were supposed to give varying amounts of light (as opposed to the maximum they always provide). I suspect the idea was to make the game a fair bit darker then it eventually became, and they changed their minds later on and dumbed the system down (probably thought that their original way of doing things would make things too hard/frustrating for the player).

 

Dunno if that woulda affected the base missions, though. However, in that mapset, they probably woulda put the lights in anyways - lets face it, even if a room isn't quite dark enough to warrant it, in real life people tend to turn the lights on...

 

Likewise there's lots of other stuff that doesn't serve functional purposes. Your dropships, for example, have all sorts of tiles that are outright invisible because the ships were made invunerable (you can't chop 'em up to take a closer look at the insides without a game editor of some sort), but someone still had to take the time to draw 'em.

[Hobbes]

Dunno if that woulda affected the base missions, though. However, in that mapset, they probably woulda put the lights in anyways - lets face it, even if a room isn't quite dark enough to warrant it, in real life people tend to turn the lights on...

 

Unless the aliens disable the base's power when they land

[Zombie]

I knew about the light but I thought that the reduced light would give a better atmosphere. I've been wondering if the ambient light in the bases is affected by the geoscape (why make tiles that give light otherwise?)

I doubt light levels in a base are determined by the geo clock. I mean, for comparison, look at an alien base. It's always dark as night except for some of the vats which illuminate. Also, if you've ever built a base with a living quarters, an access lift and then a bunch of hangars with a group of psionic laboratory modules beyond that, you'll notice that the Psi Lab modules are very, very dark (due to the fact that they and hangars lack light source tiles).

 

What I don't get is the following quote at the wiki on the Base Defense page:

 

(even the Hangars give 20 tiles of vision, despite visual effects to the contrary)

Huh? So how can you see the full 20 tiles if there are no light sources in a hangar? I don't get it. Unless the programmers are using the wrong internal light intensity, no light=reduced visibility. Right?

 

Unless the aliens disable the base's power when they land

You would think that the people who built the base would have included battery powered backup lights in each module like most commercial buildings and warehouses use these days. That would make it pretty hard for the aliens to knock out all the light sources.

 

- Zombie

[Hobbes]

You would think that the people who built the base would have included battery powered backup lights in each module like most commercial buildings and warehouses use these days. That would make it pretty hard for the aliens to knock out all the light sources.

 

- Zombie

 

You would also think that Earth's finest top secret ultra advanced mega giga tetra penta organization would have decent soldiers at the beginning. Maybe the bean counters decided to save on batteries

[Bomb Bloke]

Huh? So how can you see the full 20 tiles if there are no light sources in a hangar? I don't get it. Unless the programmers are using the wrong internal light intensity, no light=reduced visibility. Right?

X-Com bases use the same rules as the rest of the game. The "visual effects" are on the user side.

 

Either your soldiers can see what's in a tile (lighting values of 0-9), or they can't (10-15). It only matters which side of the line the light level falls on - it doesn't matter how far the line gets crossed in one direction or the other.

 

So there are two types of missions: Day missions (where the ambient light level is 9 or less), and night missions (10 or more). All the other quirks of lighting are cosmetic and have no effect on how the game actually plays; in a night mission, any light source will provide a visibility radius of 9 tiles away from the center.

 

Your bases have an ambient level of 8, making them a day mission (to your soldiers) that looks like a night mission (to you).

 

The "visual effects" aren't technically lieing, either. If your eyes and display are good enough, you should be able to spot the difference between "night" and "day". But your eyes would need to be pretty good...

[Hobbes]

X-Com bases use the same rules as the rest of the game. The "visual effects" are on the user side.

 

Either your soldiers can see what's in a tile (lighting values of 0-9), or they can't (10-15). It only matters which side of the line the light level falls on - it doesn't matter how far the line gets crossed in one direction or the other.

 

So there are two types of missions: Day missions (where the ambient light level is 9 or less), and night missions (10 or more). All the other quirks of lighting are cosmetic and have no effect on how the game actually plays; in a night mission, any light source will provide a visibility radius of 9 tiles away from the center.

 

Your bases have an ambient level of 8, making them a day mission (to your soldiers) that looks like a night mission (to you).

 

The "visual effects" aren't technically lieing, either. If your eyes and display are good enough, you should be able to spot the difference between "night" and "day". But your eyes would need to be pretty good...

 

Yeah, that's my understanding as well. When I decided to get rid of the light sources I remembered something about this but I decided to try it anyway just to give the base a different feel.

[Zombie]

X-Com bases use the same rules as the rest of the game. The "visual effects" are on the user side.

 

Either your soldiers can see what's in a tile (lighting values of 0-9), or they can't (10-15). It only matters which side of the line the light level falls on - it doesn't matter how far the line gets crossed in one direction or the other.

 

So there are two types of missions: Day missions (where the ambient light level is 9 or less), and night missions (10 or more). All the other quirks of lighting are cosmetic and have no effect on how the game actually plays; in a night mission, any light source will provide a visibility radius of 9 tiles away from the center.

 

Your bases have an ambient level of 8, making them a day mission (to your soldiers) that looks like a night mission (to you).

 

The "visual effects" aren't technically lieing, either. If your eyes and display are good enough, you should be able to spot the difference between "night" and "day". But your eyes would need to be pretty good...

Ah, I see. So it's basically a case of all or nothing/black or white so to speak. To my soldiers it's either always noon time light or midnight dark - never varying shades of gray. But the game does otherwise show light levels which gives a player the illusion of dusk/dawn.

 

Not to get off topic, but do alien bases suffer from the same issue of either light or dark as an X-COM base? Which side of the line does an alien base fall on? I was always under the assumption it is the dark side.

 

- Zombie

[Bomb Bloke]

Alien bases fall on the side of night missions, though there's a fair amount of light sources around so it doesn't really matter so much. Consider throwing a flare into the middle of the organic areas, but otherwise don't worry about it - the twists and turns make it difficult for an alien to get LOS without also coming into the light radius of either your troopers or some other random glowy thing.

 

It's only really when performing surface missions that darkness can really mess you up, but luckily you can pick the timing of those (usually) so even then it's not so bad.

 

Also keep in mind that lighting completely ignores walls and stuff. Shines right on through. You get your full nine tile radius away from the center no matter what's in the way.

 

Here's a few sample shots taken from my editor. The red tiles, labeled 10 or above, would obscure aliens.

[Zombie]

Alien bases fall on the side of night missions, though there's a fair amount of light sources around so it doesn't really matter so much. Consider throwing a flare into the middle of the organic areas, but otherwise don't worry about it - the twists and turns make it difficult for an alien to get LOS without also coming into the light radius of either your troopers or some other random glowy thing.

I thought so. Well, there isn't much light in an alien base really, just some vats in the big storage room with the watchtower, the engineering module with the 4 small rooms upstairs and the command center. The only module which is guaranteed to show up is the command center - the other two are crap shoots. I normally bring some flares along and an Auto-Cannon with a couple clips of Incendiary ammo. The Incendiary rounds are fired into the organic areas and allowed to BBQ the aliens and the flares are used everywhere else.

 

Also keep in mind that lighting completely ignores walls and stuff. Shines right on through. You get your full nine tile radius away from the center no matter what's in the way.

I kinda figured this since there isn't shadowlines where the light hits an object.

 

Edit: thanks for the pics, those make it really easy to visualize what's going on. Nice!

 

- Zombie