We're putting together some questions to ask the team at Chaos Concept who are working on the game UFO: Extraterrestrials and want your input!

If you have any quesitons for the team that you'd like us to ask, please post them in this topic and we'll try and include them with our list.

For those of you who don't know what this game's about, read the information below and check out the official website HERE!

The game is quite like the original X-COM games in that you can research, buy, sell manufacture in the geoscape view, and takes it one step further in the tactical part of the game by having the ability to destroy anything you want.

They're currently working on the AI (developed by experts who graduated cybernetics that should guarantee a real challenge for every great strategist), air fights and the level generator.

The expected release date at the moment is October 2005.

What is the story?

Do we fight UFOs like in X-Com?

How far along are they currently?

Have they done any previous games?

How will it be published?

Who will publish it?

Will it be a budget title or full price game?

Will there be a demo?

Cheers, I knew I could rely on you to come up with some good ones

I'll get you some more once the worst hangover is gone

I have a "few" questions:

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How does the UFO:ET storyline fit in with the original X-COM series (if any)?

Are any battles waged on good old Earth, or does the whole game revolve around the planet "Esperanza"?

How do missions on Esperanza differ from those on Earth?

In what ways is the AI for UFO:ET different from X-COM?

What are the similarities and differences between X-COM and UFO:ET's Geoscape and Battlescape screens?

X-COM has the following missions: UFO crash/landing sites, terror sites, alien base missions and base defense missions. Obviously, there any new types of missions implimented in UFO:ET. But exactly how many different mission types are we looking at?

Any new and/or improved weapons to play around with?

How are soldiers controlled in battle? Do you control 1 soldier and the rest play "follow the leader"? Do you move each soldier one-at-a-time like X-COM, or can you select multiple soldiers and have them move/attack in a group?

Are shooting down UFO's a thing of the past because your ships can never catch up with the alien craft?

How many alien races are there, and how tough are they to kill?

From the screenshot section of your website it seems as though you have to constantly defend your base(s) against alien intrusion. Is this the primary mission type encountered, or is there an even mix of mission types that pop up?

Are your soldiers always out-numbered and out-gunned, or can you bring a siginificant number of troops to catch the aliens off-guard?

Is there a way to reverse-engineer alien objects into its constituant parts? For instance, most alien items/weapons in X-COM are made from alloys and Elerium-115. Is there a way to get UFO:ET engineers to "crack" the items to yield the starting materials such as alloys and Elerium?

What about Psi powers? Are they implimented in UFO:ET?

Are there different skill levels to play at? Is the lowest skill level easy enough for players of X-COM to get better at, or is the AI so strong that the aliens always have an advantage?

Without spoiling the whole game, how does it end? Can your forces ever totally defeat the alien menace?

Lots of good questions were asked.

I did reword some to keep the flow of the interview consistent so the questions are all in there, just some are reworded slightly where other questions may have touched on the same topic

Hopefully we might have the answers back some time this week (he says, guessing wildly!).

Sounds good. Will be interesting to read!

UFO Extraterrestrials is the X-Com Clone that I thought looked most promising. I just hope that they get it as close to X-Com as possible, make it play right under Win XP and the latest Graphics Drivers, make it moddable, and listen to input and expand the game when they are done with it.

The fully destructible physics sounds promising.

Everyone panicked awhile back thinking that this game had been cancelled. Chaos Concept don't respond all that well to the messages on their official forum - even worse than Altar.

But, the message of the shipping delay gave people hope at least that the game wasn't cancelled.

If you can fly through the air and can have multiple levels like in X-Com that would be a big step above the Altar stuff.

Also, I hope that the UFO Extra Terrestrials doesn't have the 7 man limit that made so many disappointed with Altar's Aftermath product, and now Altar's Aftershock product. Make UFO Extra Terrestrials so that you can take the number of men you want to take, subject to Avenger size or whatever the name of their drop ship size.

I think I've seen 12 men at most so far on a UFO:ET screenshot. Fingers crossed you'll be able to assign them to mini-squads like in X-COM Apocalypse and then you get a whole three or four squads max!

I guess the interview will provide answers to this?

I think I asked about squads and so forth... Hope I did anyway, but it's not really that major (yeah, I know, this will start a nice little debate now Ive said that ).

You think...

You hope... *fumes*

::

:lol:

Ah, here we go. I combined a few linked questions into one overall question:

Didn't seem much point having those as separate questions when one answer will cover all those points

Pete:

After these questions have been answered by the UFO:ET development team, will we be able to post some follow-up questions for them to answer? I know I'm still gonna need clairification on some issues, and new questions will arise from the old. I hope this is possible.

I should think so, but possibly not straight away (and don't hold me to it as they may not want to do another one ).

If they're hoping to release the game around October time, we'll have to work out some sort of Star Wars like cliffhanger and keep you guessing for about three months until the next interview Need to pass the time somehow

I'm sure that the UFO: ET team doesn't want to give away all of it's secrets. So how about this: after they answer our first batch of questions, we start posting follow-ups. After enough are gathered, just pick the top 10 most appealing questions from the list and submit those. That way, we aren't bothering them all the time, and the questions they receive will be fewer and more relevant. I'm sure they would agree to answer 10 more questions, just to shut us up for a while!

Hehe, well when I post the news, post the interview, send out the newsletter (which Slaughter is kindly putting content together for again) and recover from the huge numbers of people who come along to read the interview, I shall sort something out

Ask them if they are going to E3. Maybe I could interview them in person.

They've not yet got a publisher, so I doubt it

Hmm, ask them if they got my e-mail about publishing next time you speak to them.