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need help with air tactics


Frank

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Hi all,

I'm playing my first real game and since it's veteran / iron mode I cannot really experiment, and am struggling with the air battles. I did two practice runs before but stopped at an early tech stage, so the past months I didn't know what to expect, which was quite fun.

I'm doing quite well on the ground (a few soldiers with Predator armour + Plasma Caster really ensures superiority!) but not in the air. To give an idea of where I'm at, I just encountered my first Wraiths. I have only just built a first X-59 Marauder. Besides that I have 6 Condors and 1 Foxtrot spread over 3 bases, so very poor for this stage of the game, and still only have the starting Corsair. I just lost a second continent and keep on getting waves of 5, 6, 7 UFOs and I fail to shoot down many of them. Speed and fuel is an issue to get to all of them. I'm also having money troubles, spent too much outfitting my soldiers I guess.

I realize I made some poor decisions with the aircraft but don't want to start over again, hoping I can still succeed with this setup. How would you suggest I spread the aircraft over the bases? And for a potential next game, what should the aircraft line up be...decommission the condors at an earlier stage? Also, shall I go for that communications tech to identify which UFOs can be taken down with just a Marauder? I reckon that might help...

So far really enjoying this game (was an early backer and only got round to it now), I played tons of x-com so although some things are new most of it is pretty familiar. Especially loving the ground tactics. My last game a random soldier with a heavy weapon went berserk in turn two, nothing had happened yet, killed one of my senior soldiers. What I love and hate about this game!

Thanks all!

Frank

Edited by Frank
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Hi!

I'll leave the strategizing to some of our more senior forum members, but to get an edge in on the air combat you could take a look at Taskus youtube videos that show you how to get the maximum out of your planes:

Edited by Gijs-Jan
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Two basic things:

1) Too few aircraft - I'd say you want enough aircraft for three at each base and more if you can.

2) Inadequate aircraft - Foxtrots are the workhorse aircraft for most of the game. They are sufficiently fast that they can catch most UFOs and with appropriately-tiered weapons have enough fire-power to destroy UFOs you are facing without retaliation due to the range of their torpedos. So the bulk of your aircraft for the early-mid game should be Foxtrots, with Condors kept for dealing with alien fighter patrols and for support when attacking an escorted UFO.

In terms of your current game, my advice would be to replace your Condors ASAP with anything better. You may be a bit far through the game for it to be worth replacing them with Foxtrots now - may be better to build Corsairs or hold out for Marauders. But if you're having financial problems, Foxtrots may be necessary to pull you through until you can afford more advanced aircraft.

For a new game, I would advise having a single Condor and two Foxtrots in each base you build. That's sufficient to deal with just about anything - you'll need to be reasonably good at the air mini-game to defeat fighter patrols/escorted UFOs with a single Condor but the two Foxtrots will allow you to destroy everything else with ease.

Once you research Corsairs, I would recommend replacing your Condors with Corsairs as these are vastly superior fighter-killers and you can use them right up to the end of the game. If you're very good at the air mini-game, you can keep on with Condors but eventually their slow speed and short range will render them ineffective no matter how good you can actually use them in combat.

Once you get Marauders, it's basically just a matter of upgrading everything as they're superior in every way to older aircraft. But by the time you get to that point, you should be on top of the aliens anyway so should be easy to do.

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Thanks for the guidance! I have definitely been doing things all wrong then, maybe it's a miracle I survived till end game (I assume I'm near the end, since I'm reaching the end of the research tree). I guess I somehow made up for poor air tactics with a good ground force. For the aircraft mini-game, I have actually always used auto-resolve - I will check out those videos to learn how to do it - yes crazy maybe that I'm not doing this in ironman mode! I regularly get my planes destroyed.

I just built a second marauder (got some cash from destroying two alien bases), presumably I should keep them both in the same base so they can take out anything quickly? Then it seems the next step would be to build corsairs to replace the condors, as another marauder would be too pricey for now.

Otherwise, since the predator armour I find the game has become quite a bit easier, even with the aliens getting tougher...three guys in predator armour with some background support can go around and handle pretty much anything (so far).

Edited by Frank
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