Sorry for this long post (didn’t expected it to grow so much). I wonder if there will be any good reason for destroying all alien bases which you can spot. Because I suppose that it won’t stop alien expansion, growth and development - only slow them down. Will the reason to slow them for a while be enough? We won’t also take fight to the oceans for at least most of the time in the campaign.
Currently it is the good strategy to leave at least one alien base and wait for it to generate haven defence missions. Rewards from these missions overcome reward for destroying alien bases. Or at least I really prefer nice gift of resources and some small boost in reputation with one faction (and leader of defended haven) over the boost in reputation with all factions. There is also good reason to limit alien bases count to limit risk of fight the queen. But still you don’t have to destroy all alien bases.
Of course this is not balanced and not finished yet. Overall standing with factions doesn’t matter right now. And there is no other benefit except boost in reputation after finishing those missions. So currently taking out alien bases has no point except the fun while shooting mindfragger eggs and associated squeak sound when they die. And you even have no mission triggered when those alien bases emerge. But I was thinking about it and below are my conclusions what reputation can be used for and why it can be quite important.
Despite what will developers invent about diplomacy, trade and research, we will also need to care about reputation with all 3 factions (so taking care of alien bases) because of three things (reasons):
- There constantly will be missions on which you will need to choose which side you take on and you will always loose more reputation with one faction (your enemy during the mission) than you will gain with the other (your ally during the mission). Because making someone an enemy is easier than making him an ally. So your average standing will all factions will constantly drop just by doing such missions (but there will be other rewards overthrowing this penalty). Remember that not helping the requesting side will also have negative impact on reputation.
- All factions can force their need and demand to attack alien bases. When the alien base is spotted you will need to take actions. Maybe this demand will be shown and triggered by mission screen and if you won’t act in some determined (but also randomised) period of time, you will loose reputation with all the factions (which will be really bad outcome). This could be balanced in few ways:
- factions won’t demand from you taking out all spotted alien bases at once, but let say, that they will have some goal for you which will have higher frequency than alien base generation. So you still would need to destroy alien bases more often than they appear, which should result in any specific region to be freed from alien menace (and you won’t have the generator of resources
). Alien Bases not spotted won’t count to this goal. - and of course they could create that demand based on your tech level. So let say that there will be at least 4 alien base levels: Nest, Lair, Hive, Cluster. So if you have few men and only some basic weapons they won’t demand from you to attack alien hive or cluster. And will require to attack alien lairs only from time to time - definitely with less frequency than attacks on the nests.
- And above two will be important because having overall bad reputation with specific faction will lead to open war with them, and you would not want to be screwed by constant raids of, let say for example, NJ soldiers at your bases - presumably NJ (and other factions) will have more people and resources than you during the whole campaign (maybe except the moment when they will be almost eradicated). And fighting both aliens and NJ won’t be a good way to optimise your time and resources. Of course you will always have some negative standing with at least one faction but maybe it will be possible to keep it in range from -35 to -5, so they will be negative towards you, but still not taking actions against you on strategic level - only hostile/neutral on the missions where they will show up on the occasion.
Of course probably there will be other reasons to destroy alien bases except boost in reputation. Maybe some rare alien materials (not items) for research? Like alien foon, alien materials, alien tech. Maybe sometimes we will need some rare body part which actually is on spawned monster in some specific base. But still those won’t require from the player to eradicate all alien bases.
What do you think?