V12.1 air combat difficulty - did it get hard??

I had no trouble in Kickstarter build - happily got to Aug/Sept before terror missions and never lost a plane. It felt too easy until corvettes and 2+1 fighters turned up. I know there is much balancing to come - this is just for discussion not bitching Oh, Veteran difficulty.

However, with 12.1... scouts instakill F17s if they get in range. Before, you could take a hit or two, and they had the slow firing weapon so you could dodge (or am I remembering this wrong?). I now have to take 2 of mine for one of theirs, so I can get behind. I still did this before when possible, it was much safer. On its own, this would be fine - I have no problem with UFOs being better than my feeble starting craft. But now it seems UFOs spawn in clusters more than before - I've seen 6 targets on geoscape simultaneously by June 18th! I don't think I could field 12 F17s by then!

I build two bases from the start, get hangars as fast as possible in the 2nd so I'm stopping a fair few of the early UFOs (which I believe slows invasion progress). But it's just not possible to shoot down this many. I'm getting Terror missions by late June, I simply can't stop that many UFOs at once. I'm going to experiment with a single base and 8 hangars, but I suspect I'll lose out, not stopping enough activity in other zones due to losing coverage.

Alien fighters seem weaker than scouts now, bit strange. They have the slow weapon so you can dodge, and get behind 1-on-1. But they come in packs of three much sooner (it seems?), I can only field 3 craft at once, and coordinating 3 dodges is hard. UFOs are, reasonably enough, better than my 1970s crates, so I die here also.

Am I using weak air combat tactics? Missing something else that's causing huge spawning?

Yes, air combat did get harder. As Chris wrote in the V12 update:

Scout UFOs: These are now more dangerous at close range, but their weapons have a shorter overall range. The counter is intended to be a MiG with 4 Sidewinders, which will kill them from beyond their range and only take minor damage in the process.

4 sidewinders will kill a scout - 2 F-17s or a MiG. Getting in close with a scout without upgraded weaponry is not reccomended!

And yes, there are a lot more UFOs to start with. Chris wrote in the V12 update changelog about this as well:

Geoscape Invasion Escalation: This has been smoothed out. There should be more UFOs at the start of the game, but their numbers should increase more slowly than before. There should also be less fighters relative to before.

I see light scouts the first 10 game days, then start seeing normal scouts after that. The key to managing it is to realise there's a lot more of them than there is of you. There's no point trying to do everything at once, so just learn to let go, let the UFOs do their thing and focus on one base at a time, one area at a time. You can't do everything at once, so don't bother. The backers aren't going to abandon you in your first month!

Now, as to dodging. You know you can pause the air combat by pressing the spacebar, right? While paused, you can still issue commands, so it's easy to co-ordinate multiple dodges using the pause function, as well as manage missiles to maximise damage. Personally, I'm starting to use a lot more MiGs now, as even though MiGs can't dodge they can take some damage and they have enough missiles to crack a fightercraft open. This might change when I start rolling out alienium missiles - the F-17 might be able to handle scouts and fightercraft without MiG support - I shall see.

EDIT: The key to air combat if you're outnumbered or outgunned is to work out which of your fighters the alien ships will lock onto. This has been up to now the aircraft which you selected last in any squadron. If you can work that out, then you can lead the alien craft off with the "locked-on" fighter as a distraction while the others fighters come in and start shooting.

Scouts always had torpedoes that instakilled your stuff if you didn't dodge them. When fighting scouts, zoom in close up and be ready to pause/roll. When a bit larger than the usual plasma bolt thing called 'Unidentified Object' plops out from the scout, roll. It'll try to home on the fighter, but torpedo turns too slow to actually hit after the first dodge.

4 sidewinders will kill a scout - 2 F-17s or a MiG. Getting in close with a scout without upgraded weaponry is not reccomended!

Only on Normal. Veteran leaves a scout at 90% after 4 sidewinders.

The one issue I have at the moment is how your F17s become completely obsolete once you have a MiG. If you send them out as a squadron to protect the MiG, they slow the whole squad down on the geoscape, as I assume the MiG travels at their slower speed, to the point that they often can't catch Scout UFOs.

I wonder if rather than a 'high speed' interceptor, the MiG could be a 'long range' interceptor, which has a much greater fuel efficiency and just a slightly higher speed. Then Scout speed could be reduced so that F17s are still able to catch them in some cases, but due to a Scout needing three sidewinders to down, you still have to use them in pairs to get the same result as using one MiG, so you still have the incentive to research and build your MiGs to optimise your hanger capacity.

The one issue I have at the moment is how your F17s become completely obsolete once you have a MiG. If you send them out as a squadron to protect the MiG, they slow the whole squad down on the geoscape, as I assume the MiG travels at their slower speed, to the point that they often can't catch Scout UFOs.

They really don't. MIG's suck balls against fighters since fighters started dodging, so F17's armed with laser cannons and alenium missiles still have a solid place. At least until Chris finally lets us play with the new aircraft (Corsair is the first I believe).

Ah, to be fair I never got far enough into the previous build to start encountering fighters too much, I was thinking about Scouts only really but you're right.

> 4 sidewinders will kill a scout - 2 F-17s or a MiG. Getting in close with a scout without upgraded weaponry is

> not reccomended!

As noted - not on Veteran it won't. 2 anything vs a scout is okay, it sticks on one of mine and I can get a lock with avalanches or finish with cannon. Good to hear they did actually get harder. Personally I haven't been able to change the missiles on Migs, while I could before. I'll... try clicking harder.

> I see light scouts the first 10 game days, then start seeing normal scouts after that. The key to managing it is to

> realise there's a lot more of them than there is of you. There's no point trying to do everything at once, so just

> learn to let go, let the UFOs do their thing and focus on one base at a time, one area at a time. You can't do

> everything at once, so don't bother. The backers aren't going to abandon you in your first month!

Previously trying to do everything worked really well. You could earn more money this way from selling after missions, and get more funding because you were doing better at stopping them. There was no downside (which didn't feel right, but that's just how it played in earlier builds). I could get 5 bases built before terror missions started.

There were always more of them than me, that's fine. But now, *if* you have two bases from the start, there are a *lot* more than you. Oddly, having experimented, with one base they don't seem to ramp up anywhere near as fast. Perhaps you get more invasion progression if you see a UFO but don't thwart it? So you're not penalised as much for not having a base in a region, as having one and not stopping them?

This still leaves the problem that I'm getting terror missions *before the end of June*, and I only have one base. Chinooks simply don't reach that far. On prior builds the game would end very soon after failing one or two terrors, so I've been restarting. Has this been changed?

> Now, as to dodging. You know you can pause the air combat by pressing the spacebar, right? While paused,

> you can still issue commands, so it's easy to co-ordinate multiple dodges using the pause function, as well as

> manage missiles to maximise damage. Personally, I'm starting to use a lot more MiGs now, as even though MiGs

> can't dodge they can take some damage and they have enough missiles to crack a fightercraft open. This might

> change when I start rolling out alienium missiles - the F-17 might be able to handle scouts and fightercraft

> without MiG support - I shall see.

Well, yes and no. Yup, happy with pausing. But they fire faster than the dodge recharges, and once you're very close, your pilots are very very bad at shooting anything (constantly circling). 6 missiles aren't enough to take out three fighters, so you have to use cannon, so you have to be close... It's very tough to engage three fighters with cannon without taking damage. I can generally kill three fighters with three F17s. But I will sometimes lose a plane. With two bases, the rate of incoming UFOs was so high I was losing all money (you can't currently gain *any* money back from shooting down fighters...).

If Migs are tough enough that might work. 12 missiles would destroy 3 fighters easily enough. Will give it a go.

> The key to air combat if you're outnumbered or outgunned is to work out which of your fighters the alien ships

> will lock onto. This has been up to now the aircraft which you selected last in any squadron. If you can work that

> out, then you can lead the alien craft off with the "locked-on" fighter as a distraction while the others fighters

> come in and start shooting.

This really doesn't work for me, once there are equal numbers of combatants. You can actually see which plane they're targetting, that's fine. Also, for me it's always the first plane I select to launch that's targetted by the first UFO. But, with a squadron of three UFOs, they split attacks. I've never seen all 3 enemies target the same one of my planes - it would be much kinder (and boring) if they did that . This is was gets me - 1-on-1 I can't avoid all damage, and sometimes lose planes. Combined with the rate of incoming UFOs I'm finding it impossible.

I'll experiment with using Migs earlier (previously I saved them for corvettes only). Another tactic might be to ignore almost all of them. Down an early light scout for the pistol research, and ignore everything until light scouts to get the power source. Wouldn't be very satisfying

Oh, and I'm also having fun times with escorting chinooks, as that drops your squadron down to 2 But you can be a lot more tactical about when you launch the raid, so I don't mind that.

When using Migs verses small craft, make sure you've equipped all slots with sidewinders! I make this mistake waaaaaay too often, especially after I've built a new MiG.

Having looked at some of the files, terror missions seem to be initiated when the alien ticker reaches 350. As there are a lot more alien ships to begin with (far more than you can see, as the chance of an events generated by UFOs has been dropped slightly), the ticker increases much more quickly. If you want to see less terror missions, then I believe setting the ticker value in AM_Terror.xml to a value higher than 350 (say, f'rinstance 700 - double the original value) would initate the chance of terror missions beginning later in the game, when you are more established.

I wanted to equip with sidewinders (although you can use avalanches against anything that can't evade, if you position carefully) - it didn't seem to let me. Swear I'd been able to in previous builds. I'm now waiting for 12.11 to install.

Thanks for digging around in the files - sounds like everything fits with what I'm experiencing, so that's fine. I don't want to change config yet, hopefully my reports / whining is useful feedback for the yet-to-come tuning stage. I like hard games, and I like breaking stuff, so I want to ensure Veteran and Insane are playable, beatable, and not exploitable via design choices (not considering bug exploits here).

Currently Veteran feels beatable (maybe!) but very hard, and the invasion ramps quicker than (for me) feels good gameplay wise. Terror missions feel like an "aliens well-established, mid-to-late game" element for me, and I'm consistently getting them before I research any armour or weapon tech upgrades. Perhaps an hour into the game, no more than two. Will keep trying new tactics and see how I go.