Geoscape - Random events

Phoenix Point Game Feedback
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Ghost ship landfall
A random type of ship washes up on shore somewhere, generating a Scavenging Site mission that takes place on and within said ship. It could be:
1. A warship, or what’s left of it (contains useful weaponry & military hardware you can use, fairly balanced between Materials & Food as you’ll likely find MRE’s and nonperishables there too)
2. A supply ship carrying storage containers, anyone’s guess what’s in them.
3. A research & exploration vessel for mapping the ocean, and studying the Mist. Lost at sea when it drove into a cloud. Now found by you, it may still hold highly valuable tech to salvage, and maybe even useful research notes on the Pandora virus.

Alien nesting site ambush
If your intel is good enough, you may manage to catch the aliens just as they’re beginning to set up one of their Nests. You’ll find a high concentration of forces, including a Queen that you need to kill. Killing the Queen may be sufficient to stop the Nest’s construction. All you need to do is deploy a squad to the site and fight them in an open battle, and you won’t have to put up with the Nest and all its problems later. This would only happen rarely, but more often if you’ve got solid intelligence gathering going on.

New refueling site
You got lucky enough to find a sizable cache of fuel, and/or the facilities to produce it, out in a more remote location that isn’t owned by a Haven. It could be owned by the Pandora mutants, but since they don’t really need fuel, they’re kinda just mucking around – until you show up to claim the place for yourself. Win this battle and you’ll be able to place a new Refueling Station there. Since it isn’t on a Haven, though, you may need to assign some personnel there to keep it active, or contract a Haven out to run it in your absence. They might appreciate you handing a new fuel source over to them. Either way, you’ll get a new place you can send your aircraft from out of it.

Renewable scavenging sites by scouting
A Scavenging Site you thought you picked clean once turns out to have more to it than meets the eye. Perhaps a scout or infiltrator you assigned there found something really useful, but in order to extract it you’re going to need to send a squad to clear the place out some more.

Forest fire
A one-off event where a region of forested terrain somewhere on the map catches fire, causing one or more of a few things to happen.
1. The fire threatens a Haven. You may be called to provide Materials to help stop the blaze. If you do not, the Haven may be forced to move, go inactive for a time, or lose a bit of “Defending Strength” due to having to cope with nature.
2. The fire sends a cluster of otherwise peaceful invading mutants scattering away. They may stage a raid on a Haven, or find their way to an Alien Nest and bolster its defenses.
3. The clearing of the trees reveals a new site to visit that you hadn’t noticed before. This could be a very well-hidden Alien Nest, a Scavenging Site, or more.

Black market traders
Really, this name is kind of a misnomer, since trading weapons and other equipment isn’t exactly “illegal” with the complete collapse of all national and international order and rule of law. In any case, with so much war salvage from World War 3, plus a HUGE uptick in demand in general with all the chaos that is now compounded by the Mist, it isn’t that uncommon to find semi-nomadic bands of traders dealing in useful merchandise. These traders move on the overland map from site to site, potentially clearing out Scavenging Sites that you didn’t get to in time, and occasionally visiting an Independent Haven to set up a temporary shop to hawk their wares. If you visit their shop at this haven, you may be able to purchase some unique weapons & equipment, including some custom pieces you can’t get anywhere else (like “combat cocktail” performance-enhancing drugs; these tend to be popular everywhere), or maybe a lead on a new, high-value Scavenging Site. You may even get lucky enough to buy a functioning ground vehicle, or even a helicopter from them. Of course, you’ll have to pay a hefty premium in Tech, Materials and/or Food.

Thoughts? If anyone has other ideas for random events in Phoenix Point, please post them here!

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Like a few of them. Only one that I’m not keen on is the ‘merchant’. Can’t see how they’d exist in this world unless affiliated to someone or thing.

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Very nice ideas Setokiva. Random things happening in the game also greatly helps replayability of any game. They might be a little hard pressed to add extra mission types to the game but it would be great to see them, even if they are added later.

The traders are a great idea to swap out all the unwanted weapons for better things. They might also help to find rare items that are hard to find. They could be offered when you get on side with a haven or group you have saved rescued.

I love the ghost ship idea. It would make a great atmosphere map.

Other ideas…
You detect an old WW3 SOS beacon going off. You can choose to investigate or not. It can give you one of several missions, alien ambush, battle between aliens and a local faction, rescue stranded locals (hire them)…

Traders ambushed send out a radio signal for help. Local traders are ambushed by aliens, you can fly in and help, you will get better trade options, option to buy a rare good weapon, respect from local haven.

You fly over a random battle when exploring new sites. You can choose to join in but you do not know who you are helping. The battle could be between a random local faction and aliens… OR to mix it up between to factions. When you join the fight you will get onside with the winner but lose respect with the loser.

Haven has run out of ammo or supplies. You can help and lose some resources but then gain respect and maybe get a free fuel/radar station.

1 Like
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Nice! I especially like the idea of the SOS beacon. Perhaps you could pick up the transmission while flying from site to site as your aircraft’s instruments catch it, but your bases could as well if it’s close enough. A few ideas on that:

  1. New Jericho soldiers are the ones who set the beacon. Since NJ cuts away any of its personnel infected with the Pandora Virus so as not to bring in contamination, these guys are infected; you’ll have to find a way to deal with that, whether it be through your own tech, or calling in a favor with Anu and having the DoA “stabilize” the men (if they will even let you do it).
  2. Pandora mutants fiddling around with pre-war salvage turned on the beacon. They’re good at figuring out guns; not so much sensitive radio equipment. About the furthest they might get is “turn thingy on, humies’ come wit’ moar gunz for us”.

As for the random battle flyover, I really find myself liking that too, because it would happen as you are probably taking your aircraft somewhere else entirely. Thus, you can take a chance and make a quick detour to the ground. Also, I find it doubtful you wouldn’t know who’s who at a glance. Synedrion uses energy weapons, NJ uses gauss, DoA (ostensibly) uses conventional guns, so just listen to the bullets flying for a sec and any soldier would figure it out. This mission could be kept simple as a quick dust-off to evacuate or cover the retreat of some faction or haven’s people. Only question is, do you want to risk using too much ammo that you wouldn’t have enough for the mission you’re actually going to? :wink: Quite an interesting calculated trade-off that would be.