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[Pavellius]

Chinese Industrial Park (0):
American Mountain Base (0):
Brazil Jungle Base (3): Happerry, Chiefwaffles, Pavellius
Colombia Jungle Base (2): Strongpoint, Pavellius
-Same as above but in Brazil (1): Strongpoint
-Same as above but in Argentina (1): Strongpoint
Hunter Armor (1): Happerry
HOP-LITE MBP (1): Blood_Librarian

Both would be nice and seem trivial. But of course if Ebbor thinks otherwise they're not worth extra difficulty.
[/quote]

[Chiefwaffles]

What do people think of this?
Design: Brazil Jungle Base Variant B
1 Computer Core Token

The new base is hidden in the Brazillian jungles, with most of it underground as well as a decent amount of aboveground infrastructure. It has all the base essentials for an XCOM outpost to work, including small barracks for base security. But it focuses on serving as a manufacturing site and to extend XCOM's influence over brazil. Airstrips and hangars fit for Talons, Skyrangers, and anything else are put into place, with workshops capable of manufacturing XCOM equipment and vehicles.
The nature of a full-fledged XCOM outpost in Brazil should allow us the necessary influence to coordinate with inter-agency cooperation teams in the area, and if it's not a hard task (read: if it's harder than "a sealed room with slightly adjusted atmospherics") then some basic alien containment will be placed in the base.

The entire base is ran by a new computer derived from the alien computer core and the Rockslide heuristic detection algorithms. It constantly goes over data from XCOM's intelligence network and the base's sensors and analyzes it for any sign of alien activity - whether it's ground, air, espionage, or anything, then gives a compiled list of information to Command allowing for well-informed decisions. The computer also manages several once-human-manned parts of the base, decreasing space and manpower needed.

While after the fire there's very little left of the failed Argentina Airbase outpost project, we can still learn from some of our mistakes there. Like "keep backups," "regularly attend team-wide anger management sessions," and "keep goddamn backups you goddamn luddites."

TL;DR: A base w/ hangars and workshops, that also uses the Alien Computer Core token to make a computer using what we've learned from our abuse use of the rockslide heuristics to give us much better overall intelligence capabilities.

I'll keep my vote on Happerry's brazil base for now, though I'll probably switch if by chance others vote for this.

[Happerry]

Also Happerry, mind adding quick very-low-priority mentions of inter-agency cooperation teams and alien containment to the Brazil base proposal?

Added 'As well, a small experimental facility is also built to hold any alien captives taken in good health (until they are interrogated) and to prevent them from committing suicide and a minor dedicated exterior agency interaction facility is added on in case outsiders need to be worked with. However, these last two facilities are marked to be built last, and only if there is sufficient extra time, on the build plans.' to the end of every design.

Chinese Industrial Park (0):
American Mountain Base (0):
Brazil Jungle Base (2): Happerry, Chiefwaffles
Colombia Jungle Base (2): Strongpoint, Pavellius
-Same as above but in Brazil (1): Strongpoint
-Same as above but in Argentina (1): Strongpoint
Hunter Armor (0):
HOP-LITE MBP (1): Blood_Librarian

Also good point on not having an Alloy Token.

[Madman198237]

Chief, I'd be up for voting for that 'B' variant, since it seems that there's no love for the gravitational shielding. Expanded intelligence capabilities should be on top of our priority list, since we've now got Exalt and should, eventually, see some alien infiltrators. They haven't, apparently, managed and sneaky business quite yet, though I would be very surprised if they aren't trying to do that---i.e., if we choose not to go after a mission, I would expect some mimicry infiltration of some sort.

[Chiefwaffles]

Well, there is the Investigatory Unit (which has a lot of relevant tokens too) revision I have planned for this turn's revision. But it would be nice to be able to use our revision for something more directly helping our infantry in combat or even just Rockbreakers.


I'll add a secondary vote for the B Variant. Don't worry, people - I'll remove one of my votes if there's a tie.
(Also Happerry accidently removed Pavellius' vote for the Brazil VarA)

Chinese Industrial Park (0):
American Mountain Base (0):
Brazil Jungle Base Variant A (3): Happerry, Chiefwaffles, Pavellius
Brazil Jungle Base Variant B (1): Chiefwaffles
Colombia Jungle Base (2): Strongpoint, Pavellius
-Same as above but in Brazil (1): Strongpoint
-Same as above but in Argentina (1): Strongpoint
Hunter Armor (0):
HOP-LITE MBP (1): Blood_Librarian

Also, a side question to see if there's any changes I can make to the VarB for better usage of the token:
Ebbor, what kind of computer core do the aliens have? Is it just "a really powerful computer" or is there something more to it than that?

[Madman198237]

Chinese Industrial Park (0):
American Mountain Base (0):
Brazil Jungle Base Variant A (3): Happerry, Chiefwaffles, Pavellius
Brazil Jungle Base Variant B (2): Chiefwaffles, Madman
Colombia Jungle Base (2): Strongpoint, Pavellius
-Same as above but in Brazil (1): Strongpoint
-Same as above but in Argentina (1): Strongpoint
Hunter Armor (0):
HOP-LITE MBP (1): Blood_Librarian

I'm going to suggest literal alien-alloy plate armor for the revision, by the way.

[Blood_Librarian]

Legitimately disappointed that you people don't want to have cool things.

Chinese Industrial Park (0):
American Mountain Base (0):
Brazil Jungle Base Variant A (3): Happerry, Chiefwaffles, Pavellius
Brazil Jungle Base Variant B (3): Chiefwaffles, Madman, Blood_Librarian
Colombia Jungle Base (2): Strongpoint, Pavellius
-Same as above but in Brazil (1): Strongpoint
-Same as above but in Argentina (1): Strongpoint
Hunter Armor (0):
HOP-LITE MBP (1): Blood_Librarian

[Pavellius]

Switching my vote from Variant A to B.

Chinese Industrial Park (0):
American Mountain Base (0):
Brazil Jungle Base Variant A (2): Happerry, Chiefwaffles
Brazil Jungle Base Variant B (4): Chiefwaffles, Madman, Blood_Librarian, Pavellius
Colombia Jungle Base (2): Strongpoint, Pavellius
-Same as above but in Brazil (1): Strongpoint
-Same as above but in Argentina (1): Strongpoint
Hunter Armor (0):
HOP-LITE MBP (1): Blood_Librarian

[Chiefwaffles]

It doesn't matter - proper alloy armor with a grappling hook and nothing else, without a token, is a Very Hard/Hard design. That means both the Hunter Armor and HOP-LITE would at least be Very Hard.

And Madman, that just doesn't make sense with action economy. You have to admit that we're going to really want proper alloy armor at some point. Slapping bits of crashed UFO onto our Kevlar may be a benefit for the time being, but it's awful with action economy. It won't actually help with a proper armor design, which would be an extreme improvement to our soldiers' survivability. Even if all we did was design proper alloy armor and nothing else. Proper armor is important enough that it should be something done in the near future, and doing a crude-armor revision before it would just waste the revision.

And:

In other words, what other magic qualities does this ridiculous metal have?

You have no idea.
Just side-stepping away from the "takes hefty amounts of research to unlock in XCOM game" idea, alien alloy is still ridiculous. UFOs in XCOM are made from alien alloys, right? And a small scout UFO - the weakest UFO in the entire game - takes numerous repeated hits from bleeding-edge missiles in order to be knocked out of the sky.

Yet this actually does insanely small amounts of damage to the actual hull. The missiles more-or-less scratch the hull, and fluff-wise you're just hoping a missile manages to be lucky enough or wear through the armor just enough to knock out propulsion or detonate a power core. You're not actually destroying the UFO in any way.
The UFO then plummets to the ground like a rock because, well, it has no wings. It hits the ground, and is still nearly entirely intact. The majority of the crew is still alive and unharmed. The UFO can even be field-repaired to flying condition again within hours. This is the smallest, weakest, UFO in the entire game. After taking numerous hits from extreme-tech A2A missiles. After hitting the ground at terminal velocity. And it's still in one piece. It's dented, but still nearly-completely intact and within the realm of field-repairing with supplies from the UFO itself.
And this is all confirmed in the FG, too. Their ships are still intact, crews still alive, they take tons of missiles before going down, and their ships can be field-repaired to get back into the air.


That's how strong/miraculous alien alloy is. It's extremely light, extremely strong, and near-indestructible. When you're fighting against it, you're mostly just hoping to get a lucky shot with enough brute force through the alloy (which isn't already miraculously absorbed by the alloy) to hurt something important behind it.



How about this for direct infantry upgrades? We're still using semi-auto long range rifles. Which won't be that great when they outnumber us and two out of three of their units are meant for close-combat (Drones, Mimics).
Future Revision: XH-3 Railgun
The XH-2 is a solid railgun, but it's still effectively a glorified prototype.

By drawing on our experience with the manufacturing and maintenance of the XH-2 since its deployment as well as our other experience with railguns - the Phoenix gunpod, the Talon's upgraded railguns, and our base defense railguns - we can improve the gun. The XH-3 uses more advanced self-loading systems in order to reload at a rate sufficient for fully automatic fire.
Though of course, the XH-3 is configured for burst-fire. Even with the advanced hybrid technology, it's still not a great idea yet to have a fully automatic rifle. The recoil would turn the gun itself into a weapon. But regardless, it's enough to make the XH-3 more similar to an assault rifle and less like an upgraded M1 Garand.

TL;DR: We've spent a lot of time with the XH-2 and have done lots of railgun tech since then. Give the XH-2 (now XH-3) automatic-burst-fire capabilities to make it a more effective combat weapon, especially in closer-range and faster-paced combat.

And Happerry, since I kind of stole the spotlight from you, any criticisms of Variant B?

[Madman198237]

I don't think you understand just how effective in action-economy plate armor would be. Full-body protection, extremely lightweight and easy to move in even compared to medieval plate (which, again, only increases the rate at which the wearer tires, without having any other effect on their ability to move), entirely immune to melee attack (unless you expect us to believe that this miracle metal is going to somehow become worse than steel when we're using it), really, REALLY hard to kill with plasma, and to top it all off it's pretty darn simple to do, and requires zero engineering effort from us (just copy medieval plate, thicknesses and all, in the exact same design, with a different material).

Highly effective, can be upgraded to your heart's content, but uses up a single revision to provide protection that will never go obsolete, yet will improve our soldiers' survivability for a long time to come.

Of course, we PROBABLY need some more EP to field this or any other alien-alloy armor, (hint, hint, Mr. My-Base-Design-Has-A-Majority) unless we can decrease the TAV's cost (by, like, removing the alien equipment and just making it out of regular human computers, because our modern-day computers could definitely handle those calculations, perhaps?) to zero.

[Chiefwaffles]

The TAV2 can almost definitely easily be made a 0 EP equipment through any way. It's just 1 EP due to balance/rolls. I guarantee you it wouldn't have made a difference whether it uses alien computing or not. (I'm not actually sure if the TAV2 uses it, but regardless.) See Hunter Armor, which obsoletes the TAV2.

But anyways.
1.) I'm not saying revised plate armor wouldn't be effective. I'm saying it wouldn't be effective enough.
2.) It would not be immune to melee attack for many reasons. Namely A.) Arms Race balance and B.) XCOM balance (chryssalids - a melee unit - do tons of damage regardless of armor).
3.) It would go obsolete as soon as we develop proper armor.
4.) It would not progress our knowledge of the matter at all. We already know how to work alloy. An easy revision of "stick alloy on armor" won't help at all.

Simply going off of AR balance - the fact that proper alloy armor mysteriously makes it go from an Easy/Normal revision (without token) to a Hard/Very Hard design (even with a grappling hook, which wouldn't contribute that much to the difficulty) - means that there is a substantial difference in effectiveness.


Here's an example. The exact difficulties are arbitrary, but it's their comparison within the scenarios that matters.
Scenario 1: Revision and Design (Madman)
1.) Revise Plate Armor. Our soldiers get good protection for an easy price. Nice. Normal.
2.) Design proper armor. Our soldiers get amazing protection and greatly increased effectiveness. Hard.
Net result: Amazing protection and effectiveness at the cost of 1 Design and 1 Revision.
Scenario 2: Design Only (Chiefwaffles)
1.) Design proper armor. Our soldiers get amazing protection and greatly increased effectiveness. Hard.
Net result: Amazing protection and effectiveness at the cost of 1 Design.

They both have the same net result, yet yours costs 1 extra revision for no benefit.

[Madman198237]

1.) I'm not saying revised plate armor wouldn't be effective. I'm saying it wouldn't be effective enough.
2.) It would not be immune to melee attack for many reasons. Namely A.) Arms Race balance and B.) XCOM balance (chryssalids - a melee unit - do tons of damage regardless of armor).
3.) It would go obsolete as soon as we develop proper armor.
4.) It would not progress our knowledge of the matter at all. We already know how to work alloy. An easy revision of "stick alloy on armor" won't help at all.

1. Hahahaha what? What's going to be more effective than plate armor? What is going to be more effective yet not BUILD OFF OF plate armor? It's a shortcut to having the protection THIS TURN without needing to spend a design just to get something they had in the 12th century. This way, the design can spend most of its time making TAV free and integrated or some such, or making the grapple (You are attempting to tell me that presently-impossible battlefield maneuverability is going to take up less design difficulty than the actual armor, and I definitely do not agree)
2. A. AND B.: So we teach the aliens that we're not in the 15th century any more, and they need to at least get themselves a space-crossbow or something before they get killed.
3. See above. The armor itself isn't going obsolete, the things you stick on top of it/under it are.
4. I think you underestimate the impact of "by the way suddenly we're not paper targets anymore", as well as the simple fact that sometimes something needs to be done, and whether it's ludicrously simple or not, it still needs to get done. In fact, by that logic, we shouldn't apply automatic fire to railguns, because it's something we already know and doesn't enhance our experience any. We should just design a whole new railgun instead.

Scenario 1: Revision and Design (Madman)
1.) Revise Plate Armor. Our soldiers get good amazing protection for an easy price. Nice. Normal.
2.) Design proper armor all the fancy extras. Our soldiers get amazing protection and greatly increased effectiveness. Hard (Or maybe Normal).
Net result: Amazing protection and effectiveness at the cost of 1 Design and 1 Revision, the design may be more likely to succeed as a result of a different focus, or cover more ground than otherwise possible.
Scenario 2: Design Only (Chiefwaffles)
1.) Design proper armor. Our soldiers get amazing protection and greatly increased effectiveness. Hard or, likely, Very Hard.
Net result: Amazing protection and effectiveness at the cost of 1 Design, which is more likely to fail..

They both have the same net result, yet yours costs 1 extra revision for no benefit. immediate benefit and potential (probable?) benefit to the design.

Provided my own opinion, as well as fixing a few blatant errors (assuming the revision would have no effect on the design, for instance).

Salty opinionatedness aside, what do you mean, "proper" armor? Define this, please, so we're not arguing in circles. Well, we'll still probably argue in a circle, but at least we'll be arguing in the SAME circle.

Personally, I'm referring to literal knight-in-shining-armor, High Medieval plate armor (BEFORE bulletproofing became a thing, so something on the order of 2-4 mm plates, maybe down to 1 on the extremities). Not necessarily perfect coverage, but pretty close for sure. I'll try and find a picture later if necessary.

[Chiefwaffles]

The art of diplomacy.

To be clearer though, in this case.

Slapping alien alloys on standard armor would be.
1. Trivial revision if you use a token
2. Easy-normal if you don't, closer to easy than normal

If you want to actually have fancy armor that can fully exploit the benefits of alien alloy, and maybe a grappling hook or so, then we go Hard-Very hard.

Emphasis mine.

EDIT:
Two more things:
1.) Ebbor wasn't talking about "medieval plate armor but with alloy". He was talking about "slapping alien alloys on standard armor." Your thing would likely be harder than Normal, on second thought.
2.) We already know how to shape alien alloy. How would having medieval alien alloy plate help with actual alloy combat armor at all?

[Madman198237]

OK, can you please define the term "proper armor" anyway?

What characteristics do you expect it to have, what interesting bits do you want from it, etc.

Or, "What about your hypothetical "proper armor" is going to make a plate-style armor "obsolete" and what mysterious benefits of alien alloy is it going to experience that plate isn't?"

[Happerry]

Chinese Industrial Park (0):
American Mountain Base (0):
Brazil Jungle Base Variant A (2): Happerry, Chiefwaffles
Brazil Jungle Base Variant B (5): Chiefwaffles, Madman, Blood_Librarian, Pavellius, Happerry
Colombia Jungle Base (2): Strongpoint, Pavellius
-Same as above but in Brazil (1): Strongpoint
-Same as above but in Argentina (1): Strongpoint
Hunter Armor (0):
HOP-LITE MBP (1): Blood_Librarian