Hello one and all, I'm TheIdiot and recently I’ve been doing some thinkings over the ideas of XCOM: Enemy Unknown and Enemy Within and expanding on them while also dealing out some of my own ideas.

To make a note present, one thing I came up with is something for multiplayer – in this case it’s an easy thing that they could do that’d also be pretty interesting as well.

The first one is a simple co-op campaign with you and your buddy working together as commanders of two separate XCOM facilities, like say I'd have control of the South America facility while Arad would have control over the North America Facility like how one could control multiple bases in the original UFO: Enemy Unknown/X-COM: UFO Defense. Both players would have to work together in multiple fronts and do cooperation in the War against the Ethereals – this could be something like doing a mission together (something like the Alien Base Assault, the UFO related crash sites/landings, and Terror Site Assaults), or do missions separately and cooperate on resources; Arad would focus on Satellites and I’d focus on Interrogation/Autopsy.

The second one, is a tad more... unique; have it be a vs. campaign. Head to head, one side is XCOM, and the other is either EXALT or the Aliens – in the case of the former, they would use Cells instead of satellite coverage and set up to undermine X-COM. The Aliens would use panic mechanics and abductions; the only way they would get resources is to commit abduction missions and they could send out multiple abductors while XCOM could only respond to so few… although you would have to manage your own resources better. Once you get a country to panic, you can start to gain a steady income from that country.

Do you have your own thoughts on a better Multiplayer mode? Share them, if you think that my ideas could use more then add onto them and describe how.

(P.S. Try to be a bit clear on what you're crafting.)

4148907
I actually like both of these, and would love to play them (though you could also throw in a 3-player vs mode where all three factions are represented). If I had any modding ability (beyond my basic coding/programming ability), I'd assist in trying to implement them.

4149529 We would have to take the basic Multiplayer Mode pieces/code (reasoning why is because it grants us all the pieces for the Aliens and EXALT) and try to craft certain things to make a set up to start/do a basic model for the latter.

4149539
Luckily we'd also have the SP campaign for the base, so we wouldn't have to code everything from scratch. One of the bigger questions would have to be how to allow for "turns" or to how adapt the game to real time (for the command-level operations [research, manufacturing, etc]). XCom is almost in the middle when it comes to that. The combat-level operations wouldn't need any modifications at all (unless we want to allow for a 3-way fight in vs mode, and even that wouldn't be too hard since everything is set up to be turn-based).

4149550 Again, I think that we should at least do a tech demo in the form the combat-level operations to start with. Take small steps.

4149564
True, it's much better (and easier) to build up to the larger sections where the more drastic changes need to be made. Still, having a basic layout and plan for what we want to do at those levels is important to have.

4149570 An example of things is the fact that Exalt can have a base squad at 12 with nine more reinforcements in the game fighting them.

So I think 12 members with nine reinforcements would capture their combat design in the tech demo.

4149582
For XCom, I think a return to a larger squad size would be a good idea. Given the changes between UFO Defense and Enemy Unknown, I think Long War had too many soldiers in a squad, so somewhere around eight to ten would be good.

As for the aliens, the code has them spawn based on seeds (for the campaign, which is where all of my experience lies, I've never played MP, but have poked around the MP menu just to see what's there). Maybe have them operate at the "squad" level instead of the individual (in other words, where you equip/promote/modify the individual soldiers in XCom/Exalt, you can only do that to the group [3 to start with and promoting them can get you 5] with the aliens, unless were talking about mechtoids, commanders and the more "specialized" units). I think that this works better given that by end-game, the aliens (individually) are weaker than an XCom soldier and can generally be one-shotted, provided the shot hits.

EDIT: Corrected some spelling/grammar.