[Mod Idea] Base Defence mission types/Expanded campaign/Rival Agency

[LazerHawkins]

Ok, this might sound a little wacky, but hear me out

 

I've only played 16-20 hours of II, and I'm already starting to see signs of serious repetition. While this still largely has no effect on my enjoyment of the experience as a whole, it makes certain mission types start to feel repetitive in my Day 10+ Endless playthrough. To remedy this, I suggest a new game-mode altogether.

 

Base defence.

 

The idea for this mode is somewhat inspired by XCOM, which is the game I most readily compare to II, even though they are vastly different beasts. I see Invisible as being a combination of Gunpoint and XCOM, which I think sums up it's game mechanics quite fairly. I feel that turning II on it's head by having your team defend the Invisible Inc. compound against invading corps/another rival intelligence organization (inspired by Exalt from XCOM: Enemy Within) would shake things up a bit and add another layer of depth to the game.

 

Basic Ideas:

 

- Once you finish the last mission of the campaign, Incognita accrues enough funds from Omni's offshore accounts for you to purchase (through various untraceable black-market deals) a piece of property that will serve as Invisible Inc's new head office. This isn't as far-fetched as it may sound, seeing as Invisible did own property at the start of the game.

 

- The player would be able to select randomly generated 'blocks' of rooms that they could fit together as they pleased. These rooms would start empty. The player would then have to include one 'entry' area for the intruding forces to appear in and one 'command' block, which Central and some auxiliary operators would inhabit. There would have to be a clear, unobstructed path from the 'entry' block to the 'command' block for the build-plan to be considered valid.

 

- After every mission the player would have an option tab (next to the 'Upgrade Agents' and 'Menu' buttons) that loads a top-down view of the head office. In this view, you would be able to see Agents and other employees chilling, passively walking around, chatting (with a large amount of unique dialogue/banter between Agents), drinking coffee (whiskey, in Decker's case) and generally being cool international super-spies!

 

- The player would be able to hire new talent and install defence systems in their building. For example, you could have an empty room next to 'command' where you could build a gear storage room, which would allow you to have 8 storage compartments instead of 4. These purpose built rooms could be upgraded (tier 2: 12 compartments, tier 3: 16 compartments etc.) by pouring cash into them, or for free with special corp blueprints found in safes/vaults. Rooms like this include a medbay (seeing as I think agents who are 'downed' during missions should have recovery time) or a nano-fab room (you would have to feed items and credits to the nano-fab in order for it to be able to produce them).

 

- During base defence missions, there would be two kinds of invading forces. There would be the standard corps (whose units would follow what would normally be found in their bases) and there would be a mysterious rival intelligence agency. The corps would generally be all about brute force (allowing for different tactics depending on who they are. K&O has heavy duty shock troopers, while Sankaku has attack drones eg.), trying to bring Invisible to it's knees using their superior funding and firepower. The rival intelligence agency would approach the mission much like Invisible would, hacking your mainframe, cameras, and stunning your non-Agent security personnel. They would also be able to beam in from other areas in your base.

 

- After the first encounter with their new rival, a NEW MISSION TYPE would be unlocked in a narrated/voice acted campaign narrative about asserting your dominance as a company. Will talk more about this later.

 

- The player would also have access to a handheld scanner, which they could use to scan cosmetic items in levels. This would allow the player to add them to the head office. The player would also be able to assign Agents to different rooms (purely cosmetic feature, but has potential) so that they are more likely to spend time in that particular room. This would have some tactical benefit as well, since incursions by corps would happen without warning.

 

Invisible Inc. versus Leviathan

 

Continuing on from my earlier point, the rival agency would become a new threat after encountering them in a base defence mission. After completing this mission (either by successfully defending the head office, or by letting the rival agents steal intel from your command terminal) the screen visibility would break up and devolve into static, accompanied by the appropriate sound effects.

 

On the blank screen, a line would appear. A mysterious, gravelly voice would then speak, causing the line to waver, like on a retro boombox;

 

   "Ahhh... finally. A worthy opponent. We've had our eye on you for quite some time now, operator. Under better circumstances, we might have been able to cooperate. But now you've gone and poisoned the watering hole, haven't you? What you did to the corps has... limited our business opportunities. And now look at you. You've gone from bottom-feeder to top of the food chain in no time. But one thing slipped your mind."

 

- pause for effect -

 

   "In a pond as murky and crowded as ours, there's always a bigger fish."

 

- end transmission -

 

On the next mission after this transmission the player will encounter Leviathan Agents as well as corporate guards. The player will have to compete with these agents in order to complete the objective before they do in a competitive race-style gamemode. These encounters will happen at random, along with increased corporate and Leviathan incursions into your base.

 

Another feature will be the addition of some new unique agents to the game that can spawn as members of Leviathan. Whenever Leviathan completes a prison facility mission where they rescue a captured agent, that agent (be it a vanilla, DLC or mod agent) will be a part of later encounters. This adds some tension to team-building, but will scale well with the additional accommodation provided by the head office, so that you can switch out members of your team.

 

Without revealing too much of what I have in mind for story elements, I'm going to add that I've chosen the name Leviathan both because of it's religious connotations and it's connections to Hobbesian philosophy. THOSE ARE THE ONLY STORY HINTS YOU'RE GETTING!!!

 

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I will continue to edit this as I get new ideas. Please leave your feedback below and feel free to critique, comment and incite discussion!

[Barleytree]

This is a really cool, if overly ambitious, idea.

 

Even just a more defence oriented mission type would be great. I imagine it would be pretty fun to hold off waves of enemies with only very limited resources.

 

I think this mode would work best as a 'from the beginning' type campaign, though. If it was a continuation of the vanilla campaign then your agents are likely to be just about as powerful as they can get. If you started from scratch, you'd still have steady item progression and money trouble to keep the experience engaging.

[LazerHawkins]

Thanks man!

 

You make some valid points. I think that in the case of Endless, the head office would be available from the start. But for the campaign, if this mod were developed as part of an overhaul (where I originally posted my ideas) that added new weapons/weapon tiers and more challenging enemies, it could work after you complete the standard campaign.

 

I have no experience with coding, so I don't have such a good idea of the scale of my ambition here, but I think that maybe half or 60% of what I've suggested above can be done using resources that are already implemented in-game.

 

But honestly, I have no clue ;D

[HumanKirby]

The hardest things I would just see by flying over it are:

-there has not been any(really few) research on how level generation works, as well as mission types

- we can not really make new rooms, but I just asked jason if he could release the spyface tool for us, which would allow that, but even if it is released, it would be needed to test and get used to it

- while rival agent would be cool, they would need a new basic AI to "feel" like agent, as well as a custom, specialized AI fpr there abillitys (for example, Derek needs a completly different "way of thinking" then Nika), which also means that agents from other mods would only work if specialy integreated or a good ai is written. Also remember, enemy Inteligence Agency might use an Operator to, which means the AI needs comunicaten between agents

- stuff i forgot now

 

I would like a thing, but it definitly would shift this tactical into a long term strategy game.

[Cyberboy2000]

I did take a look at how level generation works and I have been thinking about some concepts.

Making rooms should be possible even without an external tool, at least theoretically. There isn't anything internal preventing you from copying room layouts at pasting them together like the tutorial does, but I need to experiment with how that affects seeds, level transitions etc.

 

However building levels ingame is an entirely different beast. It would probably be easier to build an entirely different game.

And to be honest, I don't think a base defence oriented Invisible Inc could work even if someone would be able to program it. This game is meant for simulating infiltrations. It's not XCOM.

I don't hate your idea, I think a tower defense with II mechanics could definitely work, but it's not something I want II to turn into.

[LazerHawkins]

The hardest things I would just see by flying over it are:

-there has not been any(really few) research on how level generation works, as well as mission types

- we can not really make new rooms, but I just asked jason if he could release the spyface tool for us, which would allow that, but even if it is released, it would be needed to test and get used to it

- while rival agent would be cool, they would need a new basic AI to "feel" like agent, as well as a custom, specialized AI fpr there abillitys (for example, Derek needs a completly different "way of thinking" then Nika), which also means that agents from other mods would only work if specialy integreated or a good ai is written. Also remember, enemy Inteligence Agency might use an Operator to, which means the AI needs comunicaten between agents

- stuff i forgot now

 

I would like a thing, but it definitly would shift this tactical into a long term strategy game.

 

In hindsight I agree with most of your points here. I think that instead of building the rooms in-game there could just be a selection of a few presets to choose from, but that may not be possible.

 

Instead, fitting with the rng theme, the layout of the head office could be randomly generated for each playthrough. This would add some level of difficulty while also making it easier to implement (i think?). I don't know whether it would be possible to save the layout of the head office so that it doesn't regenerate each time you enter it so... there's that

 

Following on from that, the head office map itself could already have all of the rooms you need, so you would just have to create a menu in which you could upgrade the facilities and use them to gain bonuses.

 

On the front of AI for Leviathan agents... you got me. I have no clue how hard it would be to code new FUNCTIONING AI that controls agents in a meaningful, realistic way.

 

On the front of a Leviathan Operator, yes there is meant to be one. However, the difficulty of coding communication between agents could be circumvented by simply having one uber-powerful Leviathan agent at a time. Or it could be done in a way so that if one Leviathan Agent sees you, then all of them know where you are. The problem is coding how they respond ;D (I think?).

 

I did take a look at how level generation works and I have been thinking about some concepts.

Making rooms should be possible even without an external tool, at least theoretically. There isn't anything internal preventing you from copying room layouts at pasting them together like the tutorial does, but I need to experiment with how that affects seeds, level transitions etc.

 

However building levels ingame is an entirely different beast. It would probably be easier to build an entirely different game.

And to be honest, I don't think a base defence oriented Invisible Inc could work even if someone would be able to program it. This game is meant for simulating infiltrations. It's not XCOM.

I don't hate your idea, I think a tower defense with II mechanics could definitely work, but it's not something I want II to turn into.

 

Then I think, at least until the spyface tool is released (if ever), copy and paste/random base generation for each playthrough would have to cut it.

 

I find your assessment on the purpose of the game to be fair, but I don't necessarily agree. That's probably because I have much more experience with long term strategy games than shorter indie titles and probably have very different expectations of II than you do. I find the gameplay to be excellently punishing, but I feel that after a certain point (that comes very, very early on in an endless playthrough) it lacks any sense of progression/escalation/nuance. I'd be able to cope with this, if the campaign was much more fleshed out and interesting, but it isn't really. 

 

I think that I'd be able to write a decent campaign expansion for your overhaul if you wanted. I think the Leviathan idea would be something I could work with.

 

Thanks for your feedback!