Airstrike rewards

Casualties are inevitable IMO no matter how good you are.

Pssst... Save/Load - not everyone must play Ironman

I can see your point but I'm trying to look at it as a more layered topic:

- first of all and most important, I'm not talking about the game generally, I'm looking at the top difficulty levels alone as I believe they should be way more punishing in more aspects than what currently differentiates them from Easy and Normal;

- Ground Combat is the essence of the game - airstrike option (at least at Insane) should be there as an opportunity to avoid completely wasting crash sites you can't reach, not as a nearly full replacement for GC in all occasions. If you are playing Veteran or Insane you should have to roll out more fights, not "have the option to skip them if you don't feel like it". I would argue you should be pressured financially if you shy away from more than say 30% of the crash sites at those difficulty levels, and even more on Insane. Or at least be forced to be creative about optimizing your expenses if you want to use airstrike more often!

- The point about alien alloys and, to a slightly lesser extent, alenium, is not that you need to do additional GC to get to last tier weapons and aircraft, as a matter of fact you need to do no more than a tiny portion of them to achieve that!! You get so many of these resources that assuming you aren't genuinely avoiding nearly all crash sites, you'll never have a shortage with them that would hand you any sort of challenge to build the equipment which requires them! I'd really like to see them employed differently (don't know if massive reduction on at least Insane would work) to present an additional type of challenge to the truly hardcore player. At the time being only construction of a large fleet of Marauders presents me with anything close to a challenge in that sense. And looking at where my resources are heading I'll be having much more trouble with money than alenium to do so by the time I research them. That's on Insane.

- I truly believe both what you are talking about and what I'd like to see are achievable in the same time by employing a few more difficulty modifiers although I'm pessimistic about it actually happening at this stage.

Pssst... Save/Load - not everyone must play Ironman

It's not like Ironman can't be save scummed either, it's all about how you want to play the game and what brings you a sense of enjoyment and satisfaction.

It's not like Ironman can't be save scummed either, it's all about how you want to play the game and what brings you a sense of enjoyment and satisfaction.

I thought ironman saved the moment anything happens? How would you save scum that?

I thought ironman saved the moment anything happens? How would you save scum that?

Use your imagination Although doing it ultimately defeats the purpose so it's kind of pointless unless you really don't want to see weeks of effort destroyed if you hit a really poor patch of luck.

Yeah, you can simply keep several backups of the ironman save, outside the game, and restore those if you really want to. But as Kevin said, why would you play ironman if you're going to do that?

Anyway, Kevin, I struggle to think how you accrued so many resources. Playing on Veteran, I'm reaching the end of November and have 17 Alenium and 66 Alien Alloys. And I've assaulted the majority of the crash sites! Some UFOs had to be shot down over the ocean, though. Clearly, if you have a hundred Alenium and therefore hundreds of alloys, you must also have gained hundreds of thousands of dollars from the same missions, and never really felt the funding scarcity many of us are feeling.

Yours is definitely an exceptional situation, for some reason, so I wouldn't say gathering that many materials is particularly easy and needs to be made harder.

Have you advanced to Corvettes and particularly Landing Ships and above? I've done quite a lot of these already (just got my first Cruiser). The low tier UFOs like Scouts don't really pile that many resources, but later on it's an entirely different story. I'm not sure of the date but I'll check it out next time I start the game.

By the way even at this early stage you have 66 alloys. How much do you need to produce laser and even plasma weapons for your team, again? Not exactly a resource you need to consume regularly if you can stockpile such numbers, right?

You need a ton of alloys right when corvettes show up to get a shrike, wolf and buzzard armor, laser an plasma weapons, a scimitar, and 6 or 7 corsairs built more or less simultaneously. Significantly more than 66.

And he hasn't built any of these yet?

You need a ton of alloys right when corvettes show up to get a shrike, wolf and buzzard armor, laser an plasma weapons, a scimitar, and 6 or 7 corsairs built more or less simultaneously. Significantly more than 66.

You absolutely DO NOT need a bunch of Corsairs when corvettes show up. I handled everything up to and including cruisers with Foxtrots and Condors. I'm defeating cruisers with Foxtrots and Condors. I'm using Corsairs to go after enemy fighter sweeps or on groups with heavy fighter protection (that's very recent in my game.) How you might be asking? Well, Condors armed with plasma cannons are quite deadly. I went for offensive firepower research before armor or fancy jets. So, my Condors had laser cannons early on and now they have plasma cannons. My Corsairs armed with dual plasma cannons are absolutely devastating. They can down cruisers without any help from Foxtrots. For ground troops the same rule applies. Go for offensive firepower first. If you're a good player armor is less important because you are careful not to expose your troops to enemy fire until you can kill them before they can return fire. I'm just now researching Predator and it's late Feb. My troops use Wolf and plasma weapons.

And he hasn't built any of these yet?

Money's the real bottleneck for me. My guys have Jackal armour and two suits of Wolf, plus four laser rifles. In the air, my Condors and Foxtrots (3 and 1 in North America and 2 and 2 in Europe, respectively) have Alenium warheads and gatling lasers.

I'm getting close to the Shrike, but yeah, strapped for cash all along. And a new, night, terror mission just popped up in Bangkok. Second one in the game so far, and second one in the month. I barely survived the Androns and Light Drones with three guys last time, in daytime, so things are looking grim unless I reload and pretend the terror attack never happened...

You need a ton of alloys right when corvettes show up to get a shrike, wolf and buzzard armor, laser an plasma weapons, a scimitar, and 6 or 7 corsairs built more or less simultaneously. Significantly more than 66.

You certainly don't need to rush (or truly, ever build) Corsairs. Condors beat Corvettes, and Heavy Fighters. Foxtrots with plasma beat Landingships with Heavy Fighter escorts. Corsairs are nice to have, but you certainly don't need to rush them and they are hardly vital at any point.

66 alloys is actually enough for a Shrike (12), 10 sets of Wolf/Buzzard (40 total), and a start on weapons. With two workshops, that's already 20+ days of manufacturing time, during which you'll gain even more alloys.

You certainly don't need to rush (or truly, ever build) Corsairs. Condors beat Corvettes, and Heavy Fighters. Foxtrots with plasma beat Landingships with Heavy Fighter escorts. Corsairs are nice to have, but you certainly don't need to rush them and they are hardly vital at any point.

66 alloys is actually enough for a Shrike (12), 10 sets of Wolf/Buzzard (40 total), and a start on weapons. With two workshops, that's already 20+ days of manufacturing time, during which you'll gain even more alloys.

Sure, assuming you have a million dollars to spare and no other needs like radars, aircraft and defense batteries...

Sure, assuming you have a million dollars to spare and no other needs like radars, aircraft and defense batteries...

It's more like 600k (plus whatever on weapons) but my comment was more to point out how far that many alloys could actually go.

A point that I am currently mulling over is whether a second strike team can pay off. Fun to have for sure, but it is a significant investment of money, to get the team up and at least with laser weapons. Given the relatively low money from ground missions, I am not sure if that team pays for itself or not.

A point that I am currently mulling over is whether a second strike team can pay off. Fun to have for sure, but it is a significant investment of money, to get the team up and at least with laser weapons. Given the relatively low money from ground missions, I am not sure if that team pays for itself or not.

I'm not sure if it does in terms of hard numbers, either, but I've always had two teams. Yes, it's a drain to get your B team started, but in the long run it would seem to me you get significantly more $ from ground missions that way. It also gives me the flexibility to replace A-team deaths with something better than rookies if need be (B-team is basically my farm league). Once both teams are up and running, you can keep your backups relatively well-equipped for little investment by giving them hand-me-downs. And a side benefit is allowing you to often avoid night missions, if you consider that a plus

Well, let's see: The chopper is $50k a month, and soldiers are what, 20k each? Figure 300k once you include facilities and replacement soldiers. Add a one-time cost of something like 500k for 8 sets of armor and weapons per tier (though you don't necessarily need armor for everyone). Let's say each tier lasts 2 months. And finally, if you're going after corvettes, you can figure you're gaining $35k above the cost of an airstrike a pop.

That means you need to use that second team for about 16 downed craft every month for it to break even. I assume larger ships have a bigger payout, but the gear probably gets more expensive, too. I haven't gotten as far as plasma and landing craft since many builds ago so I can't comment on much past this tier.

It's 100k to buy the Chinook + 25k for the Hangar, +10k per soldier. For an initial team of 8 soldiers, that's 205k$ to get a team that can run a mission at all. Equipment costs vary greatly, I usually equip the second team with some older weapons. Make them 2-3 new suits of armour and weapons, but mostly they get older weapons from my main team. That's much lower than your figure, but still quite a cost.

It's worth bearing in mind that ground missions are the only sources of alenium/alloys, so even if the second squad is expensive to run it's still giving you something you can't otherwise have (it's kind of like turning money into resources).

That said, I've never had much trouble with resources and the only thing I can think you might use them for is building equipment for your second squad (which if you never had you'd never need). So it might not actually matter.

Yeah resources aren't abundant, but it seems that there are enough for most cases. Maybe playing with a mod that tightens resources more could be interesting.

A mod that sticks overdamage on all alien weapons? This would destroy carried equipment when a soldier is killed. Don't know if this would affect armour, but it should definitely affect weapons.

That sounds very punishing, but maybe overdamage on some of the heavier alien weapons, and a fix to the issue (if it's moddable and not a game bug) where armour suits do not disappear even after a squadwipe.

It's true, you could limit it to the heavy rifle, battle rifle and plasma cannon, maybe (the assault plasma as well?). Might have to do an experiment.

Hey,

What are the current airstrike rates for e.g. small scout? I am playing on 1.07 and I receive 15,000$, not enough even to cover for improved armour. I vaguely remember that at some point Chris mentioned that amount of cash will be buffed a bit, so I wonder whether it made to the game. Thing is I started this campaign on either 1.05 or 1.05.

Airstrikes were pretty much never meant to cover upgrade and manufacturing costs (more just maintenance than anything else). They were just devised so that you didn't have to do the Scout GC for the hundredth time while making sure you got something for shooting the UFO down.

Ground Combat will ALWAYS about yield x3 more funds than airstriking something.