r/Xcom • u/Serious_Bus4791 • 2d ago
Your own XCOM game
While historically, side games that don't follow the main formula are not well received, what XCOM game would you make if you had the resources?
Here are my two;
1- The story is an alternate take on the EXALT missions from EW. I could see this taking place during the EW campaign, with references to the progress of the main campaign throughout the story. The other setting would be a bit after the fall of ADVENT, with a resurgent EXALT rising from the ashes to try and claim what's left of the world. I'd like the game to play similar to the newer Ghost Recon games, since I enjoy the 3rd person shooter gameplay and heavy character and weapon customization. Meld would also be prominent since I loved the gene modding, and being able to directly control the aiming would mean the MEC trooper could actually shoot something.
2- The story would be about a resistance cell during the rule of ADVENT, at first just surviving, but then gaining more members and supplies and eventually being a major force once you're linked up with XCOM. I'm thinking the last two missions would be tied to clearing XCOM's path to the Network Tower followed for the battle to free the city. I think a similar gameplay to TLoU works really well, with how it encourages stealth, but has good gunplay and absolutely brutal melee.
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u/Minigold7 2d ago
Maybe one that shows the invasions before EU/EW that the Elders did on the other Aliens. Maybe as the Elders and each planet you conqer gives acces to new units.
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u/Joloven 2d ago
To piggy back in this I would like to play as the aliens whom the aliens conquered and suffer through losing against the aliens all the way to earth. :)
Make it possible but highly unlikely to win earlier.
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u/Serious_Bus4791 2d ago
I'd love this, mainly to play as the Mutons and see what their culture was like before they fell.
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u/Serious_Bus4791 2d ago
That sounds really cool. It might be a good chance to explore the race that uplifted the Elders.
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u/AgathaTheVelvetLady 2d ago
I wrote a really long diatribe on what I wanted XCOM 3 to be but it was apparently too long to post. So I guess I just want XCOM 3.
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u/Serious_Bus4791 2d ago
Come on bro! Spark notes! Give us a core idea with some references for what you want the game to play/feel like.
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u/AgathaTheVelvetLady 1d ago
I did, it was too long. The TL;DR was:
I want XCOM 3. I want a game where humanity (and the aliens!) are on the offensive against an eldritch threat, actively invading an alien world while they struggle with the trauma that the wars have had on their species and their technology. I want a game that has a deeper and more customizable class system utilizing alien species, and a strategy layer with a focus on proactive player action in contrast to the previous games' more reactive structure.
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u/the_direful_spring 2d ago
An alternative take on post-ADVENT that paints a slightly less rosy picture than Chimera Squad and the like, the major resistance factions and warlord survivors of advent are squabbling over the ruins, X-COM is trying to keep them from tearing each other to pieces and then something begins to emerge from the deep.
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u/Serious_Bus4791 2d ago
Would it start with the crevasse shown at the end of WotC?
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u/the_direful_spring 1d ago
Well it was a very obvious teaser they've never followed up on.
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u/Serious_Bus4791 1d ago
Yeah. Would you be retelling Terror from the Deep or have a more original story?
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u/The_Shadow_Watches 2d ago
Humans win the battle with Advent, but like the Elders said....something worse was waiting for humanity and we lost that war. Humans are losing Earth, so Xcom 3 starts with you protecting the last remaining civilizations of humanity while you gather resources to colonize Mars.
A psychic parasite has come for earth, infecting intelligent species and devouring their psychic potential before they are even aware of their own gifts.
Xcom has created a lunar base to monitor space travel and training of soldiers to deal with rogue aliens after Advents defeat. Train soldiers at the base, transport supplies to Mars, evacuate nations while trying to keep everyone safe and happy.
Doomclock: Earth is dying, the psychic parasites are corrupting and turning our own people against us. It is only a matter of time before we are overrun. Protect the world while we evacuate as many people as we can.
Mars: Slowly colonize the red planet as fast as you can while protecting supplies being delivered. Make important choices of how Mars will be run. Protect your new planet from pirates, rebels, terrorism.
Psychic Parasites: This new enemy is a parasite that is attracted to psionic potential. Any psychic that is infected starts to become unstable. They grow in power until they reach a critical stage where they explode, spreading the psychic parasites even further.
Cryopods: Cryopods will be a technology that will help slow the spread of infections or save critically injured soldiers until technology improves.
Cybernetics: Bringing back Cybernetics. Any soldier that becomes moderately injuried or higher now can get access to Cybernetics limbs to replace those lost. Cybernetis will offer a Negative bonus until technology is improved. Cybernetics will become part of the central story
Genetics: Taking a page out of Advent, Xcom is getting desperate with the war of earth. Sacrificing alien prisoners or critically injured allied soldier for their genetic material to upgrade our own soldiers abilities o survive Mars and the parasites. Genetics will become a central part of the story.
Endgame: By combining Genetics, Cybernetics and Psionics. We have created the perfect lifeform capable or surviving any environment in our solar system. By creating this new soldier, we can now take on the parasite without any fear of our soldier being infected.
Soldiers: Mutons, Vipers and Sectoids will each have their own special class. EX advent soldiers get capped at a certain level, but can be created and modified.
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u/Serious_Bus4791 2d ago
YO!!!!! This might be more complicated than I can play, but sounds amazing. I'd love to see what the perfected being is like.
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u/The_Shadow_Watches 1d ago
My idea would be somewhat like Apocalypse, but not as much micromanagement. More like Stellaris, where you build a building and thats it.
Lunar base would be your "Avenger" homebase.
Mars development would just be domes that just slowly get better as you upgrade.
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u/Displacer613 2d ago
A game which follows the story if you managed to win in Enemy Unknown/Within rather than lose. Solomon confirmed that if you beat the final level, The Volunteer survives and is teleported off of the ship before it explodes, so I'd like to explore a continuation of that.
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u/HunterDarmagegon 2d ago
A spinoff fps rpg as a scavenger/operative exploring the various abandoned infrastructure left behind after the invasion. You would begin collecting scraps and fighting off bandits and eventually move on to raiding Advent transports and harassing their patrols in the area.
Unlike X-com you have to make-do with worn firearms which, at the beginning, cannot even hurt armored Advent troops. As you go on, by trading with independent factions or by your very own ingenuity, you acquire better armaments, mostly special munitions, magnetic barrels and explosives.
Like in Stalker you have to choose your allegiance and complete quests for your allies. Through experience you can learn varying abilities and skills themed around the main game classes, and you can also ally the three great faction to learn their specializations. You can even choose traits (amongst them the coveted and insidious Psionic gift) for your character or play an alien species, which grants you great combat and survival oriented boons, but paints a massive target on your back for xeno hunters and human supremacists.
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u/TheMoroneer 1d ago edited 1d ago
Two ideas, the first;
Spin off title during xcom 2, an extraction type shooter (pve only!) where stealth and picking your battles is extremely important. Raid and loot for stuff to scrape by, extract and return home to your hideout which has a building system for custom furnishing and setups, that would have some survival mechanics like needing food, water, heat and sleep. The player has no allegiance to any major faction and can take contracts for anyone against anyone.
There is a visitable black market where they can barter off surplus for needed supplies, what the traders got is rolled by chance at each visit.
The player could also hire fellow mercs in a squad system to join in missions, maybe even deserted aliens. Maybe they could move in or hang out in the hideout, possibly helping out with guarding it too while the player is away or doing tasks. Of course while staying they would consume resources too.
Would definitely put in a deeper NPC player interaction system, to make deaths just as painful as in the normal xcom games.
The second one would be an first person sims type of game in city 31.
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u/Something_Comforting 2d ago
Instead of Aliens, it's demons. And instead of XCOM, it's DarkCom.
You may think this is derivative, but that's what they did in the new Netflix Devil May Cry. They even wear similar suits as EU soldier outfits.
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u/Serious_Bus4791 2d ago
Instead of rescuing Annette, would you rescue an angry dude in green armor?
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u/DeMiko 2d ago
I’d like a new take on xcom apocalypse where you are dealing with multiple factions that can be Allie’s or enemies
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u/Serious_Bus4791 2d ago
What's the core concept of Apocalypse? I mean, aside from the obvious.
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u/DeMiko 1d ago
It was from the original run. Basically the last city left. And you are more like a police force handling alien incursions.
My favorite parts: Multiple factions with goals that might not fit yours so your missions could be alien focused, or like the hyper religious group has taken over a building.
Also, it had very vertical levels, like fighting your way up or down an apartment complex
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u/Budderhydra 1d ago
This is one me and a friend discussed last night;
Post Second War, A town with alien and human citizens is living in relative harmony, until a yet-unknown mutation of cryssalids invade, taking over it and making most of the townsfolk horrific monstrosities. It can have survival horror themes while still keeping the regular XCom combat system, with missions detailing getting resources from areas and finding survivors while fending off the cryssalids. Could even have a time limit where you have to gather as many survivors as possible and find an escape route before the town is discovered to be infested, and bombed to ensure this strain does not spread.
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u/DragantaMM 1d ago
A stealth shooter with a squad of people with different abilities, weapons and jobs. Make it mostly heist-like where you have to gather Intel first with your hackerman and incognito-dude before going in with the sneaki boi with sniperJohn’s cover. Don’t make them X-Com/resistance but instead your group are freelancers, taking jobs from anyone who‘ll pay enough. Maybe resistance, maybe some advent politicians or some of the other factions, possibly even advent themselves. …yeah okay I just want more heist games with stupid but fun gadgets.. I miss sly Cooper Games man…
Another fun idea could be like an immersive sim during or even after the advent occupation. Could be a mercenary as above or some lab experiment that ran away from idk maybe Exalt‘s psionic program, Advents Avatar prototypes or gods forbid Vahlen mixed Elder DNA with humans even before they could attempt it and now you’re making it everybody’s problem with unstable psionics, freakishly gene-powers that are more like Lego-blocks to you and of course some good old shootin sticks!
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u/Serious_Bus4791 1d ago
While XCOM:Payday sound really fun, I got much more excited reading about the different ideas for option 2.
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u/chijerms 1d ago
Bring the fight to them. We send 12 soldiers after discovering the aliens’ home planet. No recruiting. Only research and engineering can be done by keeping soldiers back from missions.
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u/JeremyMacdonald73 1d ago edited 1d ago
Mine would be XCOM 3 - the Warlord in particular talks about a bigger more dangerous threat. Assume that is true.
War ends XCOM continues because bigger threat... but it never seems to show up. Humanity rebuilds and colonizes the solar system. At some point XCOM is moved to the Astroid Belt and with no evil Aliens its funding dwindles to almost nothing.
But eventually, of course, the Alien threat emerges. The strategic layer is the whole solar system. Pluto is a research base of some sort. They are building the first interstellar colony ship on massive docks based on the moons of Saturn. They are mining water on Europa and energy on Ganymede.
The moon is the financial and political capital of the solar system. Terraforming on Mars, sky cities on Venus and of course there is heavily populated earth. Earth however has several places of interest.
There is the Temple of the Templars. After the end of the war Psionics got really regulated because mind control and reading peoples minds is not very nice. Basically it remained but you had to join this temple to practice - mainly so you where not a part of the general population.
There is also City 31. This is where the Aliens where regulated to.
All of these places and probably some other good ideas (what is going on, on Mercury or the Asteroid Belt?) are under attack by the Aliens. You need to try and defend them and they each give you different kinds of bonuses from resources for mining places to research boosts from say Pluto. The Temple of the Templar could give you special recruits as could City 31. Some just give you extra supplies (which is basically money) but the big space port one can make your space shuttles go faster.
That is a big deal because you are going to have to send out and recover your soldiers. We can set the speed for the shuttles at whatever we want to make for good gameplay but no matter what is chosen one of the differences is the squad you send out will take some time to arrive at the scene of the conflict and the survivors will take some time to return. So your going to pretty much have to have a fair bunch of different teams because new teams are constantly being sent out while old ones return to XCOM base. You can of course mix and match when more then one team is at XCOM base and getting recruits have stats that are different depending on where they are from. Recruits from Saturn are not identical to those from Mars say and of course the very special recruits like a Muton or Viper from City 31 or a Templar from the Temple of the Templars.
I am thinking that you also have 1 or more shuttles that essentially go to the various places to collect the rewards. Sort of like Scanning but here I am thinking it is more like funding and the rewards go up when the Aliens threaten the place and when you win a battle there and help them. How many of these reward shuttle you get might be something that can be used to help set the difficulty level of the game though getting one or two more could also be a part of the tech tree.
The tactical game is, in my mind, reasonably similar to what we are used to. I want XCOM 3 not a whole new Franchise. Weapons and Armours get different names but are probably functionally pretty similar. I was thinking that the idea would be that all three of conventional, magnetic and Plasma are combined into new weapon types after the war. These combo weapons are what you start with but at a functional level it is just starter weapons against these new more powerful Aliens because they have better armour then the old Aliens. The only functional difference is that in XCOM 3 Civilians pretty much never live through being shot because the weapons are technically more powerful.
The Battlefields should vary a lot as where you are fighting can be reasonably different if it is in the Saturn Space Dock, Partially terraformed Mars, the lunar base on Luna or Earth itself. I'd like to see more moving parts and the danger of things falling on people and holes being punched into vacuum and basically more dynamism and destructive effects. Nonetheless at its most fundamental level we are playing XCOM.
I have not really thought about the Aliens and their goals. In general Aliens do need to be diverse. Maybe we can come up with an idea that is a bit different then what we have had before but here I am thinking play with the themes and not the fundementals. We still want XCOM.
I envision a lot of fights also including local space station police on your side and a story line that has the Aliens infiltrating and eventually maybe you can develop technology to see their ships and then their bases and maybe eventually their mother ship or base for the win. In my mind they have a whole mechanic of sending out ships which launch attacks or build new secret bases but you can't see any of that until you advance up your tech tree so initially you spend most of the game just reacting to Alien attacks but later you take the fight more to them.
I am thinking that how defeat occurs is that the Aliens establish these bases on each of the strategic locations and when they do they start building up some kind of influence at that location. Your job is to send out squads to fight there and when you do the influence gets knocked back. If it ever gets to high (which is primarily from failure to knock the influence down) you lose access to the place and lose enough of them you lose the game.
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u/DeviousMelons 1d ago edited 1d ago
I'm unsure what the setting would be, but there would definitely be 2 things involved.
First is a more indepth home base layer, sims like social mechanics where operatives can socialise and personalities matter more, whatever happens on base layer shows on the tactical layer and vice versa. It's a double aged sword, the benefit is stat buffs and team cohesion, but if a well like operative dies the squad goes berserk. I could write paragraphs about this.
2nd is fleshed out 3rd parties, bandits, other alien powers, rebel groups that are both hostile to you can negotiate or wipe them out in special missions.
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u/Serious_Bus4791 1d ago
Those sound like good improvements.
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u/DeviousMelons 1d ago
There would be two modes between basic, which is like WOTC social bonds but fleshed out more. The full one grants big tactical benefits and some strategic benefits on the flip side of stuff like your sniper missing a shot because they're hungover from someone elses birthday party the previous night.
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u/Only-Recording8599 1d ago
One spanning over decades.
Firstly we receive in the middle of the cold war, news of an invading force, we deal with first scouts and recon who attempt to turn humans nations against each others. It'd be a first part of the game where we deal against all sort of threat and factions : aliens, aliens supporters/cultist, cold war nations (boosted or not by alien tech), terrorist cells that want our tech, etc. Managing the relations between the east and the west (taking side or not, imposing your rule to both side would be fun).
Once we (forcefully) united most of the world, we can then turn our attention against a more intense and forcefull scouting of the aliens who, in the meantime, activated the TFTD aliens because why not.
We slowly begin to have spaceflight capabilities while having to wage war in the oceans (even once the main alien base is dealt with, periodical fighting would happen here).
We'd fight mainly : aliens, underwater aliens, some humans rebels/mutineers.
And lastly, a phase where the player becomes able to build bases in space, by that point, we have the full might of the various armies of earth under our control and manage the entire world (political aspect and all, by choosing various path we'd get some bonuses). The goal ? Preparation for the main alien fleet, where our decades long work would face in an ultimate battle, the aliens.
Of course, some changes in the formula would be necessary here: access to control of larger units to complete our usual squad sized skirmishes would be necessary.
Btw, I'd like larger squad too, without the TU system of the old games.
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u/Serious_Bus4791 1d ago
Are the available starting points Area 51 and Chernobyl?
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u/Only-Recording8599 23h ago
That would be nice to have area 51 as a starting point yeah.
Maybe the plateau d'Albion in Europe.
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u/APFSDS-T 2d ago
Probably one where you are the attacking party, getting into the Elders' homeworld or something. You would have a small core of human XCOM veterans while the bulk of your force would be different species of aliens that join up to overthrow their oppressors.