Welcome to Resistance, An XCOM:2 Arms Race. The year is 2036, 20 years after the Invaders first arrived. Initially we stood united, but eventually humanity crumpled. Over those 20 years, the Aliens have established their rule over the globe, building ADVENT to serve their bidding. Around the world, faceless thugs patrol the street looking to stomp out any sign of human resistance. People who disagree with this new order disappear, and those that bow are allowed to exist. But not everyone bows.
You exist in the shadows. In the crumbling districts of Istanbul, human spirit refuses to lay down and die. In vacant lots, through furtive talk, resistance grows. Cells begin to arm themselves, strike out against ADVENT, and let it be known the war is not over. Inexperienced and under equipped, the only thing these Cells do not lack is the will to fight. Each cell has established themselves on the opposite side of the Bosporus to the other.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
You are the members of the Cell in the East side of Istanbul. What makes you unique? What is your ideology, your history? And what is your name? Along with Cell background, all players may come up with a couple names they would like to see for the Operatives or VIPs.
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Welcome to my humble little arms race. Before we get under way, each cell will have to develop a name for their resistance cell and some form of history/ideology for their cell. During this formative period, people can switch between the Cells before the first design phase if they find the history developing not to their liking, and wish to join the other Cell.
P.S. DO NOT SPY ON THE OTHER CELL. IT WILL NOT PLEASE ME.
Discord Server:
https://discord.gg/zUW5NnGAME RULES:
This Game will be broken down into turns encompassing 4 phases. Through these phases each cell will develop new equipment, allocate resources, and undertake missions. Each turn represents 1 month of time.
Design Phase: The core phase of the game. Simply write a proposal, or vote on an existing one- you only get one design each phase. The design with the most votes will be attempted. Then you will see the results of your design, based on a die roll and a difficulty which I assign (see difficulty)
Revision Phase” Similar to the design phase, but instead is a modification of currently existing equipment and technologies.
Strategy Phase: In this phase, each cell allocates resources to produce equipment, setup teams of operatives to undertake missions and draft tactical plans for said missions.
Battle Phase: This is where you all wait as I determine the outcome of attempted missions based off of the plans used, equipment, alien equipment and the rolls of the operatives sent on the mission. Results of mission are not symmetrical, one Cell WILL know details the others do not.
At the beginning of each turn, before any phases have begun, a list of anywhere from 3 to 6 missions will be posted. Mission rewards range from resources, VIPs, Intel, and inflicting damage on ADVENT or the opposite Cell. The missions will not always be against ADVENT, and may be against local human elements or the opposite Cell. Undertaking missions against ADVENT assets will raise the Alert level of advent in the city, making missions more difficult through increased enemy troop count as well as reinforcements. Alert Level goes from 0 to 10, and will fall by 1 point for every turn where no attacks on ADVENT forces occur. It will remain stable for 1 Attack, and increase by 1 point for every attack above that. Combat between Cell’s decrease ADVENT alert level by 1.
Examples:
An ADVENT Supply convoy will be rolling through town soon. We know it isn't a major ADVENT priority, so we could possibly take it out quick enough to get away with what we need. Reward: Supplies, Alloys, Elerium.
A newscaster snapped on Local TV last week, and spoke the truth about ADVENT. He was quickly apprehended, but they haven't executed him yet. Break into the local ADVENT stockade, and get him out. Rewards: Popularity VIP.
One of [opposite Cell]’s boys got outed to ADVENT. He worked on some of their juicer projects, so odds are that if we snatch him before they can get him out we might get some of their tech. Rewards: Details on [opposite Cell]’s tech, Engineer VIP
In this game, there are two rival resistance cells. Each cell is independent of the other, and may cooperate or backstab one another as they please. Each Cell has three tracked stats: Cohesion, Popularity and Security.
Cohesion is how tightly knit your group is, and general loyalty. This is on a scale of 0 to 10, with 5 being average. This affected by losing operatives on missions, refusing to attempt rescues of former comrades, and extended lack of food or medicine. For each level above or below, the will of operatives sent on missions is reduced or increased by 3.
Popularity is how well liked by the local populace your cells actions are, and tracked on a scale of -5 to 5, with 0 being average. Redistributing food and resources, saving VIPs, and consistently not getting any civilians killed will increase this as well as other actions. For every point above or below 0, the cost of a recruitment campaign increases/decreases by 10 Supplies.
Security is a measure of how well hidden and general secret your base of operations and operatives are. It is tracked on a scale of 0 to 5, with a base of 5. When it reaches 2, Advent alert is considered 1 level higher for missions you under take, as they zero in on where you are located. When it reaches 1, it is possible for your operative teams to be intercepted on the way to the mission. At zero, they know where you are. Security is increased by silencing informants, developing technology that assists you in staying hidden, and having good plans. It is decreased by letting informants live, poor plans, having operatives captured, etc.
Operatives are more than just the average dissident. These are people who for one reason or another are suited to actively combating ADVENT forces. They have two stars that are tracked for missions: Experience and Will. Experience starts at 0, and is increased by completing successful missions (+.5) as well as killing ADVENT and Aliens. Experience increases the effectiveness of Operatives in combat. As they level up, they gain ranks which boosts their will. Will is rolled for each operative at game start, and impacts how resistant to panic inducing effects during a mission.
Rank Table:
(Base Level) Rookie: 0 Exp, +0 Will
Squaddie: 1 Exp, +1 Will
Specialist: 2 Exp, +2 Will
Corporal: 4 Exp, +2 Will
Sergeant: 8 Exp, + 3 Will
Staff Sergeant: 16 Exp, +3 Will
Tech Sergeant: 32 Exp, +4 Will
Gunnery Sergeant: 64 Exp, +5 Will
Master Sergeant: 128 Exp, + 7 Will
Along with rank Exp gain, as operatives go on mission, if they are equipped with the same weapon or continue to perform the same part of a plan, they will gain Expertise's in them. What this means is that when executing their expertise, they gain a bonus.
To gain more operatives, you can either spend supplies to attempt a recruitment campaign, or complete certain missions that grant you fresh recruits or save long time heroes.
During Missions, Operatives may take various degrees of wounds. This is represented on the following scale: Lightly wounded, moderately wounded, critically wounded, Dead. Lightly wounded troops take 1 turn to recover, moderately take 2, and critically take 3, as well as a permanent debuff to will of -3. Dead is dead.
Certain missions will involve evacuating or killing certain individuals that are important to you and ADVENT. Those individuals that you capture can be put to use in a variety of ways depending on who they are. If they are a scientist, successfully rescuing them will grant the cell that does so a 1 time boost of +1 to both rolls of a design of their respective field. If they are an engineer, they grant a one time free revision. If they are an operative, you gain just that. If they are a public persona, a boost of popularity. If they are an ADVENT collaborator or figure, you will gain Intel, which can range from long term ADVENT goals to
a unique mission available to that cell alone.
Resources are broken down into two categories: Strategic and Vital-
Strategic Resources:
Strategic resources are those used in the construction of equipment, and are the following: Supplies, Alien Alloys, and Elerium. Supplies represent mundane materials and money needed to produce something. Alloys are high strength materials that can not be produced, only recovered from ADVENT. Elerium is an exotic element that can also not be reproduced, and is an extremely power dense energy source. Unique one use resources such as Elerium Cores may also be obtained.
Vital resources:
Vital resources are resources you need just to survive and keep your Cell stable. They are Food and Medical Supplies. Food consumption is based off of the rationing state of the Cell. The two states are half and full rations. Full rations take 2 units of food per turn, and provide no debuffs. Half rations cost 1 unit per turn, but reduce the stats of Operative sent on missions. Medical Supplies is needed to treat wounded Operatives 1 unit of Medical Supplies can remove one step of damage (explained further in operatives section) from two Operatives each.
Methods to gain resources vary from missions, selling equipment or salvage to third parties or even trading with rival Resistance Cells. Trading between Cells qualifies as a mission, where both sides agree to trade off what they see fit, and must send Operative to ensure the deal is carried out.
The following difficulties apply to both Designs and Revisions, (henceforth just "Designs" for brevity) but revisions will usually be about one step more difficult than designs in addition to being limited in scope. For example, making a whole new design for a simple rifle in a new caliber would probably be Trivial, but Easy as a revision. Difficulty is mainly determined by what experience you have with similar technology, and how long you have had that experience.
In addition to having "bugs" as a result of a poor die roll, some designs will simply have inherent drawbacks. For example, if you build a bomber with no top-facing guns, it will always be vulnerable to attack from above, or if you specify a tank design with lots of armor, a big gun, and a small engine, no die result is going to cause it to go fast. The consequence of bugs also depends on the nature of the design, a radio with severe bugs might just stop working and be hard to fix, but an aircraft with severe bugs will probably result in dead pilots. If a design makes simple advances in multiple areas, a poor result might only advance in some of those areas, where other areas suffer bugs or do not advance.
Keep in mind that, as with all things in this game, design results are subject to a lot of subjectivity.
Designs are generated using two sets of 2d4. One for effectiveness, and one for cost. 8 would equal perfect, no bugs, very cheap and a bonus difficulty reduction for you next design in this area of technology, 7 would be slight overachieving, no bugs, and cheap, 6 would be reaching the goal set in the design no bugs unless already listed in design, and unmodified expense level, 5 would be fairly effective, with a small bug or slightly more expensive than predicted, 4 would be under performing but serviceable, with a moderate bug or rather more expensive than base, 3 would be basically useless until revised, with a huge bug, or very big cost increase and ineffectiveness, 2 is failure, but still grants knowledge in the field of study. Anything less than a two is a complete waste of time.
Difficulty levels are as follows:
Trivial
Easy
Simple
Difficult
Very difficult
Nigh impossible
Each level above simple adds a -1 to the cost and effectiveness rolls, and each level below simple adds 1 to both rolls. This can be further modified based on my best judgement.
The objective of the two rebel cells is reduce the power of ADVENT and liberate your fellow humans from the oppressive regime. There are a few options to do this.The first is to continue causing enough damage against ADVENTs infrastructure and power base where they are forced to retreat. The second is to Expose to the world what ADVENT and their quisling toadies are up to. These are not mutually exclusive.
The lose condition of this game for a cell is when Cohesion drops to zero, meaning your groups hates its own guts and is not stable enough to continue operating. A Cell can also lose when its popularity reaches -5 or security reaches zero, meaning ADVENT has found your HQ either through tips from the locals, or simply being tracked down. When this occurs, the Cell will face a raid by ADVENT forces, which will be an extremely difficult mission with loss resulting in the Cell being annihilated, and a win meaning at least major loss of resources and time. If both cells lose, Game Over.
(Weapons decided by random number generator(s))
Weapons: Do not come with ammunition.
CZ 75: 9mm Pistol, 15 round magazine. Semi Automatic. Costs 5 Supply.
-1 Supply for three Magazines.
Agram 2000: 9mm SMG, 32 round magazine. Fully automatic. Costs 10 Supply.
-2 Supply for three Magazines
AK-47: 7.62mm Assault Rifle. 30 round Magazine. Fully automatic/semi. Costs 20 Supply.
-3 Supply for three Magazines.
MKA 1919: 12 Gauge Shotgun. 10 Round Magazine. Semi Automatic. Costs 25 Supply.
-3 Supply for three Magazines.
Barrett M82: .50in Anti-Material Rifle. 10 round Magazine. Semi Automatic. Costs 50 Supply.
-5 Supply for one Magazine.
RGO Grenade: Fragmentation grenade from great grandads war. 10 Supply per.
Combat Knife: An (in)elegant weapon for a more (un)civilized age. 1 Supply for 2.
Equipment:
Smoke Grenade: A dense cloud of greyish red smoke on demand. 5 supply per.
Flashbang: AHHH, MY EYES! AND MY SWEET VIRGIN EARS! WHY? 5 Supply per.
Medical Kit: Bandages, gauze, tweezers, and some morphine. Comes in a canvas sack. Not the best. 10 Supply.
Armor:
Kevlar Vest: Covers the torso, proof against pistol calibers. 20 Supply.
There are certain things I am keeping hidden that will come up depending on certain factors.
