A modest proposal why the Corsair loadout needs to change.

80 ammo per cannon makes condor overpowered early game giving it almost as much damage as the foxtrot. This would perhaps also incur some more balancing regarding its cost.

But it's much worse kind of damage than the Foxtrot, because you have to actually get close to something. The main advantage of the Foxtrot isn't really its damage; it's the ability to engage a UFO and destroy it within seconds without any effort or danger whatsoever (not to mention its extra speed and range). Even if the Condor had the same damage output as a Foxtrot, the latter would still be the superior aircraft for fighting anything other than alien fightercraft.

Right, but alien fighters can't dodge your cannon shots. So, cannons are a much surer weapon. Heavy fighters can easily dodge one or two missiles. So, in a head to head match you're in trouble if your Corsair only has one cannon and two missiles. I might be crazy, but I never thought of Condors or Corsairs as "ship killers" anyway. To me they are escorts for Foxtrots. They destroy fighters and draw the fire of larger ship, but the Foxtrot torpedoes do the ship killings. Granted, they can destroy smaller ships, but that's really not the focus by mid-game.

I see some strange thing. In airplane hangar there are option to change weapons but it nearly to useless because there no different weapons to choose.

may be some difference

now - autocanon, 2 missle types.

may be any other pikkings?

for example if we bugg everything(weapon slots and armor) twise, so airplane could have 2 autocanons, 4 missles of two types... even than no difference. lght missles is optional to autocanon+missle

may be different ammo type? light missle that has stun impact of enemy weapon aim halting?

so for one slot it could me min 2 or 3 choises. well my thought is good but... it gives minimum additional 1-2 hours to rearm in the situation of our interest in alienship differs from armed now missles

All human interceptors have 4 slots. A missile, light or heavy, takes up 1 slot. A cannon takes up 2 slots. Therefore, the loadouts you can have are:

2 cannons.

1 cannon, 2 missiles.

3 missiles.

4 missiles.

That's it. Neither the AC UI nor the AC minigame itself supports more than 4 weapons on a human interceptor.

How about a completely asymmetric buff for the Corsair?

It's the cannon-specialist aircraft so cannons mounted on a Corsair can fire in a wider angle.

More cannon ammo for the Corsair only would also fit nicely.

Overpowered units are great! As long as they are overpowered only in a very specific situation. But they should definitely be awesome at something. =)

I see some strange thing. In airplane hangar there are option to change weapons but it nearly to useless because there no different weapons to choose.

may be some difference

now - autocanon, 2 missle types.

may be any other pikkings?

for example if we bugg everything(weapon slots and armor) twise, so airplane could have 2 autocanons, 4 missles of two types... even than no difference. lght missles is optional to autocanon+missle

may be different ammo type? light missle that has stun impact of enemy weapon aim halting?

so for one slot it could me min 2 or 3 choises. well my thought is good but... it gives minimum additional 1-2 hours to rearm in the situation of our interest in alienship differs from armed now missles

I suspect that's something that needs to be changed in the UI. It used to be that you could choose between heavy and light missiles for the foxtrot, and switching to higher-tier weapons also used to be manual. I don't think there's any purpose to that anymore, though I could be overlooking something.

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It used to be that you could choose between heavy and light missiles for the foxtrot

You can still do this.

You can still choose between Light / Heavy missiles on the Foxtrot and Marauder, but as you say the remaining slots don't do much. They're a hangover from the days when the upgrades were manual but it's not worth removing them at this stage.

Plus if they are left alone modders can make use of them.

Extending the range and ammo of the corsair worked very nicely, good decision guys.

Extending the range and ammo of the corsair worked very nicely, good decision guys.

Here's my problem:

I did some digging into how the aircraft weapon's work. What I found is range and damage are linked to the weapon, not the airframe. So by increasing range and damage for the Corsair, you inadvertently make the Condor stronger as well. How does this impact balance of the autoresolve, or just balance in general?

The logical, but time consuming, solution is to make at least the ammo variable a factor of the aircraft, not the weapon. This way you can balance out the two individually.

Optionally, you could reduce the damage from missiles to make up for the increased damage of the autocannon. This might have wider ranging balance impacts, however.

You could also just make the corsair the logical next step for the Condor - 1 gun and 2 missiles. It's a direct upgrade with more speed and durability, and can kill the same stuff. It makes going 1 on 1 much easier.

I would also suggest, if you stick with the ammo increase, to keep the autocannon the same, since typically you have laser well before the corsair. This maintains the early game balance.

Corsairs used to have the same weapon loadout as the Condor, but the problem was that there was no reason to ever use a Corsair. Anything you could kill with a Corsair, you could kill with a Condor for a fraction of the price. That led to them being turned into mostly-worthwhile dedicated escort killers.

Ammo amounts don't affect autoresolve at all (unless some has been used already). The values for autoresolve are sat in the XML files.

Corsairs used to have the same weapon loadout as the Condor, but the problem was that there was no reason to ever use a Corsair. Anything you could kill with a Corsair, you could kill with a Condor for a fraction of the price. That led to them being turned into mostly-worthwhile dedicated escort killers.

Ammo amounts don't affect autoresolve at all (unless some has been used already). The values for autoresolve are sat in the XML files.

Why would a Corsair with two guns be better than a Corsair with one gun and missiles in the anti escort role and thus become an option vis a vis the Condor for cost efficiency? With two missiles you kill one fighter and the other with the gun = killing two fighters with two guns. Difference being that advanced missiles will also hurt bigger UFOs.

Ammo amounts don't affect autoresolve at all (unless some has been used already). The values for autoresolve are sat in the XML files.

Go read the thread about the latest rules for auto resolve. It's in this forum.

Why would a Corsair with two guns be better than a Corsair with one gun and missiles in the anti escort role and thus become an option vis a vis the Condor for cost efficiency? With two missiles you kill one fighter and the other with the gun = killing two fighters with two guns. Difference being that advanced missiles will also hurt bigger UFOs.

You can also do serious damage to cap ships with two cannons. Ib frequently use them that way if I don't have enough foxtrots to finish the job.

The only advantage of guns over missile's is you can't "over damage". So potentially you can kill more.

You can also do serious damage to cap ships with two cannons. Ib frequently use them that way if I don't have enough foxtrots to finish the job.

Not sure how the new version deals with autoresolve but the basic problem in my view was that the Corsair would always get shot up even against enemies a Condor would simply use its missiles and never get a scratch. So it would spent far more time in repair than essentially any other aircraft. In manual combat guns are also more longwinded than missiles.

Also when fighter escorts became a real problem the Marauder came around. Until then the MIG31 is the sole killer out there again because of range and lethality of missiles.

I'm fine with trying to specialize the different weapon platforms and I haven't played v22, yet, it's however that the Corsair as a supposedly evolutionary aircraft is actually more specialized than any other aircraft but the fury.

Go read the thread about the latest rules for auto resolve. It's in this forum.

I have. Maximum ammo amounts don't affect autoresolve values, only the percentage of remaining ammo.

Not sure how the new version deals with autoresolve but the basic problem in my view was that the Corsair would always get shot up even against enemies a Condor would simply use its missiles and never get a scratch. So it would spent far more time in repair than essentially any other aircraft. In manual combat guns are also more longwinded than missiles.

With the cannon buff, it is now more powerful than same level condor, it can manuever around the scout to kill it. And it is much easier to take fighters with it.

Though there is another balance issue that usually missiles advance faster than cannons, or maybe its just my playstyle. I find missile advancement more important so that Foxtrots get their damage on capital ships.

Mangalores, there are also several situations where Corsairs can kill more than Condor. With laser/alenium weapons a single Corsair can kill a trio of Heavy Fighters where a Condor can at best 2 for 1. Less skilled players will probably also find the Corsair much easier to use.

I'm still unconvinced that Corsairs are truly worth using, but they're at least useable now. Before you were pretty much crippling yourself by using them because they were so bad.

Mangalores, there are also several situations where Corsairs can kill more than Condor. With laser/alenium weapons a single Corsair can kill a trio of Heavy Fighters where a Condor can at best 2 for 1. Less skilled players will probably also find the Corsair much easier to use.

I'm still unconvinced that Corsairs are truly worth using, but they're at least useable now. Before you were pretty much crippling yourself by using them because they were so bad.

I've only played v21 stable because when Steam updated to experimental the game became extremely unstable so I rolled it back.

I'm not really argueing for or against it, I just can say in v21 I found the Corsair a real hassle. I mostly autoresolve because things take too long otherwise and found that in most instances the Corsair will get shot up badly where the missiles guarantee that a Mig-31 will be your mainstay until the Marauder. The number of fighter escorts seem pretty low until the Marauder so the two Corsairs I built in my latest game saw minor actions and were essentially outdated when large or massive UFOs with fighter escorts appeared because a triple of one Marauder and two Foxtrots were far better at their job.

I wish they'd kept the Saracen in and by having several airframes allow you to better balance your forces and you can get such variation of loadout. I think the one complaint would be that the Corsair is "sold" (in description and appearance) as an evolved aircraft which in any world should mean it works like its precedessors do.

They probably should have done such deviations / specializations in the mid/late game with the Marauder, Fury and possibly by adding the Saracen. Aka, Fury is the ultimate Mig 31 replacement, the Marauder more a heavy tank without combat roll that can soak up damage but can't evade and the Saracen as the knife fighter.

Possibly the Corsair is just misplaced in the tech tree and the description is outdated for the idea it stands for.

Maybe it can be given its Sidewinders back but with x2 Ammo each (total 4).

I've only played v21 stable because when Steam updated to experimental the game became extremely unstable so I rolled it back.

I'm not really argueing for or against it, I just can say in v21 I found the Corsair a real hassle. I mostly autoresolve because things take too long otherwise and found that in most instances the Corsair will get shot up badly where the missiles guarantee that a Mig-31 will be your mainstay until the Marauder. The number of fighter escorts seem pretty low until the Marauder so the two Corsairs I built in my latest game saw minor actions and were essentially outdated when large or massive UFOs with fighter escorts appeared because a triple of one Marauder and two Foxtrots were far better at their job..

If you're on v21 stable, then you're not getting an accurate picture of what this is going to look like in the final game.

I'm also on v21 Stable (because I'm on Linux, not because of stability issues), but I modded the game to make the cannon range and ammunition changes that are in V22. With these changes, the Corsair is an absolute upgrade over the Condor for air superiority - I can get away with one Corsair and two Foxtrots as a standard interception force well after heavy fighters show up, which I could probably not pull off with Condors.

I think the big change is the range buff - it means that in head-to-head engagements against fighters you can (in addition to dodging all missiles) get in quite a lot of damage before the enemy gets into cannon range. With Foxtrots to bait an enemy or two, I can usually I can take out 2-3 heavy fighters and end up above 80% health. The ammo increases just let you last out the fight long enough to get that third enemy.

Corsairs are also an upgrade because of the speed issue - Condors can't even catch heavy fighters, so without some very clever baiting they can't protect Foxtrots when attacking escorted capital ships.

I've only played v21 stable because when Steam updated to experimental the game became extremely unstable so I rolled it back.

I'm not really argueing for or against it, I just can say in v21 I found the Corsair a real hassle. I mostly autoresolve because things take too long otherwise and found that in most instances the Corsair will get shot up badly where the missiles guarantee that a Mig-31 will be your mainstay until the Marauder. The number of fighter escorts seem pretty low until the Marauder so the two Corsairs I built in my latest game saw minor actions and were essentially outdated when large or massive UFOs with fighter escorts appeared because a triple of one Marauder and two Foxtrots were far better at their job.

I wish they'd kept the Saracen in and by having several airframes allow you to better balance your forces and you can get such variation of loadout. I think the one complaint would be that the Corsair is "sold" (in description and appearance) as an evolved aircraft which in any world should mean it works like its precedessors do.

They probably should have done such deviations / specializations in the mid/late game with the Marauder, Fury and possibly by adding the Saracen. Aka, Fury is the ultimate Mig 31 replacement, the Marauder more a heavy tank without combat roll that can soak up damage but can't evade and the Saracen as the knife fighter.

Possibly the Corsair is just misplaced in the tech tree and the description is outdated for the idea it stands for.

If you mostly autoresolve, you're actually better off using Foxtrots than Corsairs for everything except groups that are only alien fighters. (And it should be much more cost effective to use adequately upgraded Condors for those, or just suicide a single Condor into them since they stop hunting after a single engagement).

We already can't seem to find a truly useful role for one plane, I don't think adding another one back into the mix would improve that situation. We'd probably just end up with two planes we don't build instead of just one.

@asaz909 - They don't need to outrun Heavy Fighters. Those come to you in manual control, and can be totally ignored by MOAR FOXTROTS in autoresolve.