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Why so much air combat?


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I have to admit I am no Xcom vet, in fact I've played very little of it though I could see how it could be a timeless classic to many. But does X com have as much air combat as this version of xenonauts and will the final version of xenonauts have it?

I was playing last night and did about Three ground battles after taking down several light scouts. I had build a second base

and had most of the buildings in place but wanted to do more research but I need more ground battles and what's more

I was starting to run a little low on funds. What happened was I got wave after wave of air attacks mostly fighters and got sick of these battles( I honestly don't care for the air combat its just small a diversion for me) they were coming several at a time

and in fleets of three. I won most of the time in the beginning, but I never had any more crash sites for ground battles, what happened is I started to lose interest and got impatient with these tedious air battles and started losing fighter planes; in the end I built a couple more hangers and added planes but I wasn't earning anymore money, also I got a few terror sites much of the time I'd run out of fuel and have to head back and what happened was something unexpected I lost the game with a screen telling me the alien race took over earth- guess I stayed up late for nothing. How is this? I still had both bases most of my planes several soldiers all in tact, yet no ground battles to earn any money or discover any alien technology and I lost.

Is this game going to be mostly air combat like this?

And how are you suppose to earn any money if there are so far and few ground battles to be had?

shooting down fighters and corvetts and heavy fighters doesn't seem to provide any money or generate funds.

And had I continued I don't think I would have had another crash site. It was all air combat in the end.

How do you handle these terror sites? As far as I could see there were no other options then to circle and patrol with fighter jets. And attack with them.

Once I read that the terror site was nuked- so we got them somehow.

Edited by windex
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Pretty sure the fighter waves are sort of a bug.

Also, money is earned mainly through end of the month funding, which is tied to aircombat.

Terror sites, actual terror site, not just mood-blurbs, which for instance that nuke thing would be, are missions on the ground and you'll have to send your troops there.

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Corvettes should generate crash sites. Try to not over-damage them.

Th amount of fighters spawning is currently not properly balanced. Future versions will probably have a bit less fighters to not make the geoscape part as tedious.

Did you get any warning that you couldn't pay off your engineers/scientists at the end of the month? There is currently a bug that tries to withdraw their wages before the payment from the funding nations comes in. And if you are unable to pay wages 2 months in a row you lose. Despite technically being able to pay if the game would just pay you before it tried to withdraw the wages instead of other way around.

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Windex, the short answer is – almost. Xcom was all about shooting down ufos and recovering the crashed vehicles. Which meant air combat. Lots of it. However, what are you most upset about?

- That you must undergo the air combat minigame for each ufo you want to shoot down?

- That there is no immediate reward for killing fightercraft?

- That there isn’t a ground battle for every ufo type shot down?

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There is currently a bug that tries to withdraw their wages before the payment from the funding nations comes in. And if you are unable to pay wages 2 months in a row you lose. Despite technically being able to pay if the game would just pay you before it tried to withdraw the wages instead of other way around.

At least it is realistic.

My bank tried to charge me as overdrawn 3 months in a row for the exact same thing.

By which I mean taking money out before they bothered to work out the money I had coming in, not that I was funding a multinational anti xenos organisation.

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Windex, the short answer is – almost. Xcom was all about shooting down ufos and recovering the crashed vehicles. Which meant air combat. Lots of it. However, what are you most upset about?

- That you must undergo the air combat minigame for each ufo you want to shoot down?

- That there is no immediate reward for killing fightercraft?

- That there isn’t a ground battle for every ufo type shot down?

There is an immediate reward. Look at the region's funding before and after you shoot something down. Profit!

Also, what Jean-Luc said. The alpha is to make sure the mechanics of the game works, so to speak. The beta is to make these things fun, while making sure the game works.

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I am well aware what the alpha is an what it is for. I was just wondering if the over frequent air combat was a bug. Which most seem to agree it is. Max Cain you didn't understand my questions: of course I know that I have to "under go the air combat mini game for each UFO I shoot down. What I am most bothered by if you read my original post is that after only three crash sites and so three ground combat battles the whole rest of the game was shooting down these dam fighter UFOs and I mean endless attacks with no ground combat. So many are saying this is a bug. And maybe I wasn't about to pay my scientist and techs though I didn't see any warning.

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It's not a bug per se. It's just a yet to be balanced aspect of the game. I think Chris simply set the ratio as something that made sense to him (at the time) for an extraterrestrial force dominating the air. Not something that had been properly balanced to prevent the amount of fighters to be tedious and annoying.

It's also possible that if you completely ignored the fighters you lost too much support from your funding nations, and they simply gave up.

I am well aware what the alpha is an what it is for.

The way you phrase your posts make it seem like your understanding of what an alpha is differs quite a bit from my understanding what it is. You seem to think it's much much closer to the finished product then I do.

Edited by Gorlom
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Icevamp, I would argue there isn't an immediate reward for shooting down fightercraft. There's a reward at the end of the month, certainly - but nothing that you get right away, like you get at the successful conclusion of a ground battle. RotGtIE broght that up in the "funding" thread over in suggestions. Windex, I drew those questions from your post. Let me quote you:

(I honestly don't care for the air combat its just small a diversion for me)

and

what happened is I started to lose interest and got impatient with these tedious air battles

So, yes I would ask if you are upset with having to go into the air combat mini-game every time because from those two passages, it looks like you are! Furthermore, I wasn't asking if you knew you had to undergo the air combat, I was asking if you were upset having to do that. Another poster has already asked if they have to do air combat every time, and could an "auto-resolve" option be available. From your original post, it looks like you are in the same camp.

Edited by Max_Caine
added a bit
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Well, yes, the actual money usually comes at a later time, but you can identify the impact of your action right away.

The immediate reward for going to work is you get paid for that work, however usually not right away. At least that's how I see it.

Our points of view might differ. But it's not very important.

A bit more on topic, it is kinda strange that windex would be able to go two full months without an additional ground mission. I usually get so many I think they get tedious. Chris would be able to answer this better, but I don't think what type of alien missions spawn is completely random, in which case this could happen.

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There are too many fighters spawning at the moment.

I think I remember you mentioning this and that's really what I wanted to know.

Glad to here it won't be like this in the finished game. If all I was doing is air combat I wouldn't want to play for long.

And no I don't hate the air combat if fact I like a few air fights before and in between going into ground combat it ties it all together and makes it more plausible. I just don't want to be doing it the whole rest of the game. What I enjoy the most is the ground combat and the research and base management each makes the other all the more exciting and interesting.

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Did you get any warning that you couldn't pay off your engineers/scientists at the end of the month? There is currently a bug that tries to withdraw their wages before the payment from the funding nations comes in. And if you are unable to pay wages 2 months in a row you lose. Despite technically being able to pay if the game would just pay you before it tried to withdraw the wages instead of other way around.

Posted it in the Bugs forum, as it got me confused also. Offcourse it could be simply an oversight or a quirk

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I have played two game months, have one ground fight and waaay too much air fights

(i build quickly second base) so right now it is hard to go one day without a message about UFO or without a fight,

if proportion between ground fight and air battle is like 1:50 it is very tedious

Edited by ditoLoco
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  • 1 month later...

It would be nice to get an immediate UFO bounty on shot down saucers, wouldn't it?

In my opinion there should always be a crash site as long as there is at least a little of the wreck left.

Suggestion: Only with overkill damage of 150% the UFO is completely vaporized. Plus there should be alien rescue missions to recover their downed saucers and personnel.

I personally would like the feeling of a lot of geoscape action and of being (nearly) oveerwhelmed in some periods.

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It would be nice to get an immediate UFO bounty on shot down saucers, wouldn't it?
From a story or a gamemechnic point of view? (Reading your posts I can't really determine which you prioritize. You did mention "as much realism as possible" I believe)

Think of it this way: from a story point of view it would be too much administrative hassle to send a paycheck to the Xenonauts each time a UFO is shot down. It's much more convenient to tally them all up and send money once a month.

From a gamemechanic point of view it trivializes the micromangement of your funds. For most people that would impede the fun of that aspect of the game. You don't have to estimate and make sure your money lasts until next paycheck, you can just shoot down another UFO. And it would probably mean you would need to re-balance the impact it has on monthly funding to the extent that you can't increase monthly funding at all. your money would be solely dependent on how many UFOs you shot down this month.

In my opinion there should always be a crash site as long as there is at least a little of the wreck left.

Suggestion: Only with overkill damage of 150% the UFO is completely vaporized. Plus there should be alien rescue missions to recover their downed saucers and personnel.

That's already how it works, but I think it's 130% overkill or something. With 150% you probably wouldn't ever reach the threshold to completely vaporize the UFO, so there would be no point in having it in the game at all.

There might be rescue missions already, but they are much more stealthy then the scouting and research ones so our radars don't detect the rescue UFOs. But why they would commit resources to rescue Ceasan clones from a situation that could quite easily be a trap is beyond me.

I personally would like the feeling of a lot of geoscape action and of being (nearly) oveerwhelmed in some periods.

I believe that is what Goldhawk is aiming for as well... the challenge lies in making it so without causing it to be tedious. (Doesn't this conflict with your request in the "Oh my god, why.." thread? This one in particular:

- a feeling of permanent progress meaning that at least every two or three missions there should be something, anything, new, either equipment or research

What I mean is the pacing would be so swift that you would not get to use or even research the stuff you found until you already found the next item. Having a backlog of research topics and malefaction requests would make the game feel like it was stagnating despite (or rather because of?) it's brisk pace.)

Luckily the speed at which new enemies show up, how many UFOs will be on the geoscape, how much money you earn, research time (and topics) and stuff like that should be easily moddable so you can try a bunch of things out.

Edited by Gorlom
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Hi gorlom,

you have me convinced there. I just thought that getting some funds immediately after shooting down a saucer would fasten game progress and give a chance to replace your losses. With all UFO games it was usually pretty tough to replace a fully equipped plane as I remember. But the mentioned planning aspect does have a lot of appeal, I agree.

And you are completely right that the challenge is to make the game exciting without being frustrating or tedious.

When I suggested that there should be many new features of the game to research (every few couple of missions new stuff to experience being alien types, weapon, equipment or whatver and not twenty mostly similar missions in a row) I meant that there should be a permanent feeling of having many options to explore.

I think that it does not hurt if you have three or more possible research topics to choose from.

Of course there needs to be a balance between the number of missions, game aspects found, research completed and thus new equipment at the player's disposal. This balance is what I wanted to adress. Because in my experience all UFO games I played suffered from an unbalance of the too high number of (much too similar) missions in that relation.

Edited by Hardball
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I feel similar like the original poster. The air minigame is not very fun/interesting for me.

I can respect that my fighters are not fast or not strong enough (based one quipment stats etc) to shoot down an ufo, but to make it dependent on some form of arcade minigame, i simply dont like.

Thats why i dont play an real-time jump n run, but some round-based strategy title in the first place.

An "auto-resolve option" would be nice for ppl who simply dont enjoy that part.

There could be an option to "auto-resolve" integrated in the minigame start window (when its paused), so the player can chose to either control himself or let the pc do it without having another pop-up.

At this point for me a pop-up with the result of the auto-resolved battle would be enough, but of course it would be kind of cool to just watch the fight or jump in and take over control if the "auto-pilot" messes-up.

Probably takes too much effort - so a pop-up with the result is probably all you could ask for at this point of the development.

I think the possible combinations of enemies and player controlled vehicles is limited (3 on each side? with xy different ufos vehicles) and the aircraft weapons probably already have some stats etc.

Well, there is always hope this can be modded later? :)

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Well, there is always hope this can be modded later? :)

Not unless someone with coding skills manages to add it in to the source code.

I would still have liked to see the air combat as turn based instead of real time with a pause button.

Fits better with the ground combat and also with the type of game I wanted to play when I picked up a turn based game.

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I feel similar like the original poster. The air minigame is not very fun/interesting for me.

I can respect that my fighters are not fast or not strong enough (based one quipment stats etc) to shoot down an ufo, but to make it dependent on some form of arcade minigame, i simply dont like.

Thats why i dont play an real-time jump n run, but some round-based strategy title in the first place.

An "auto-resolve option" would be nice for ppl who simply dont enjoy that part.

There could be an option to "auto-resolve" integrated in the minigame start window (when its paused), so the player can chose to either control himself or let the pc do it without having another pop-up.

At this point for me a pop-up with the result of the auto-resolved battle would be enough, but of course it would be kind of cool to just watch the fight or jump in and take over control if the "auto-pilot" messes-up.

Probably takes too much effort - so a pop-up with the result is probably all you could ask for at this point of the development.

I think the possible combinations of enemies and player controlled vehicles is limited (3 on each side? with xy different ufos vehicles) and the aircraft weapons probably already have some stats etc.

Well, there is always hope this can be modded later? :)

If you want to blatantly cheat you can always mod your aircrafts to be indestructible/invincible. That way you jsut have to press play and watch your airplanes mow the UFOs down.

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Not unless someone with coding skills manages to add it in to the source code.

I would still have liked to see the air combat as turn based instead of real time with a pause button.

Fits better with the ground combat and also with the type of game I wanted to play when I picked up a turn based game.

Thats a pity, as it makes it more unlikely to happen ^^

I completely agree about the turn based part tho.

If you want to blatantly cheat you can always mod your aircrafts to be indestructible/invincible. That way you jsut have to press play and watch your airplanes mow the UFOs down.

I dont want to cheat, still hope for a different option :)

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