I read it once yesterday and I've already memorized the amount of Es in EEEEE. Anyways. I like the core idea, and I like the aspects of my idea in the core idea. So I shall
steal respectfully and gratefully use it.
Basically the idea is that it should focus more on the TACTICAL stuff, and focus on using it in a way that noticeably benefits our ground troopers. Hell, I think we could get EP with a "revise TACTICs to detect useful salvage/lost gear/tech/stuff to sell" revision. While a design makes it more likely to succeed (and probably get more points) I think it's doing less than it reasonably should. So here's my thing.
Design: Economical Extraction of Extraterrestrial and Earthbased Equipment via Electronic Expansion (the difference in the name between this and EEEEE is simple, this one is EEEEEEE!)Used Tokens: Alien Weapon Fragment, Alien RemainsBased on reports from our recovery teams about the useful things they've found, we think we could greatly facilitate the process in recovering and salvaging technology, materials, and items of potential sentimental value.
TACTICAL has done great in realtime battlefield analysis, targeting, and information compilation. By increasing its processing power and recognition abilities and programming in things we've learned from our first engagements and subsequent site cleanup/recovery/salvage operations, we can have it help a lot more than with combat.
Simply put, we program TACTICAL to recognize more than just aliens and hostiles. It'll be able to recognize alien technology and perform further realtime analysis of alien combatants; both of these capabilities of course are based on recovered alien remains and weapon fragments. Helps to be able to know what to look for in general, even if you don't know
exactly what you're looking for.
For our soldiers, TACTICAL should be able to recognize potential aliens/hostiles more quickly and off of less data. And also point out known/likely weak spots in alien anatomy based on what we already know of their... biological design processes?
Alien technology/materials (and lost/damaged XCOM equipment) and other items of potential value will be noted by the network; it won't be highlighted or anything for soldiers but the locations of anything valuable will be saved for later usage. While not important nor cool enough to get the actual fancy HUD visor parts, our recovery & salvage & clean-up teams will be able to use this data to quickly pinpoint anything of note or potentially worth taking back with us.
Similar use of this to help analyze recovered items will help us determine which ones we can "donate" (for extra funding, of course) to our sponsors without hurting technology. No longer will we just chuck anything that looks vaguely alien in an underground warehouse "just in case" it turns out to be useful.
So, in summary, general improvement of the TACTICAL and specific training off of alien technology (via weapon fragments) and anatomy (alien remains). In combat TACTICAL will be able to analyze and locate potential hostiles quicker and with less required data as well as point out potential/known weak spots in alien hostiles. Detection of alien technology is saved for use by our clean-up teams to much more easily and efficiently recover more items of value from an area (whether it's alien materials, lost/damaged XCOM equipment, or anything that could be useful -- mostly to effectively increase EP). And use of this to assist analysts at the base in looking over recovered stuff should help us better determine stuff to give to our sponsors for increased funding.
We just upgrade our TACTICAL -- in general and based off of recovered alien crap. Anatomy relative knowledge should let it point out possible/already-known weak spots, and the general upgrades+improved knowledge of alien stuff should improve recognition abilities. Ability to recognize alien technology can be
very useful for both recovering more stuff from operation sites (not necessarily tokens -- more-so focused on increased EP from recovering of useful alien material and reducing the loss of our stuff) and figuring out what stuff we do find is not-important enough to give to our sponsors.
Yes, it does use alien weapon fragments and alien remains. Both of which should be easy to recover in the future as long as we push our advantage. And both of which aren't exactly 100% essential for anything useful in the immediate future.
DESIGNS
Project Nail(Coilgun) | () :
TACTIC-AL-LY 'Blind Man'(Armor) | (2): 0cra, AseaHeru
"Gladiator" SMAC (0):
EEEEE (Madman's -- sell stuff to collectors) (0):
EEEEEEE (CW's -- upgrade TACTICAL recognition) (1): Chiefwaffles
BLACK MARKET VOTING(CHOOSE TWO OPTIONS)
Veteran Personnel | (1) : AseaHeru
Elerium | (2) : AseaHeru, Chiefwaffles
Advanced Weaponry | () :
Doctrinal Support | (1) : Chiefwaffles
Still want to do the SMAC or something extremely similar to it, but I don't think we
need it this very turn. Just in the near future would be nice. But for now, improved infantry capability along with more EP would be nice.
Though on the note of the SMAC, I do have two questions for
Ebbor:1.) What's our current knowledge on Meld and the limitations we have regarding it? It was given to us pretty unceremoniously and while in the SMAC design I assume the Meld token here represents basically the main Meld discovery research in Enemy Within, do we have to start smaller/with more basic stuff using Meld?
2.) Unsure if this is a valid question, but is the limb amputation in XCOM MECs considered a notable/important step here? Like if we would to forego it for a MEC-like design would we have notably increased difficulty relative to XCOM-verse MECs.