I think the Chinook should have more fuel and have longer range and speed?

The problem I have is that the nuclear option feels so extreme in a situation where you have so little control over spawn location and timing. My team of 8 men will get there.. they will.

My alternative if you dont want a timer.

LONG RANGE EMERGENCY TRANSIT

Airlift troops to hotzone using Hercules C-130 cargo plane.

Warning! Use of emergency transport is a 7day round trip. You will loss access to all personal and craft selected for the duration.

ETA at Hotzone: 32 hours

Click to engage

That's actually a very good idea. As a bonus feature due to it being a "hot drop", you lose the option to retreat as well (mostly because you don't have a dropship).

I like that. A lot. But I suspect it might make Chris cry as it's a third type of spawn site to add to the game.

That sounds interesting.

I imagine there might be a temptation to tweak the Chinook speed/ terror duration before we see it implemented though.

Reminiscent of the varying transport options available in Apocalypse.

You could include the Chinook in the drop... you will be dispatched to local airfield from which you will engage the enemy.

The 1969 Lockheed C-5A could hold 2 Chinooks and 81 troops.

More than enough to carry this out.

This could justify the long duration, packing/unpacking your transport and equipment on pallets.

Woah, yeah that's a pretty good idea. And it won't let you only have one base or one crew, since they'll be gone so long. (This being one of the things Chris wants to force, more bases.)

what are the chances of the globe trotting C-5A getting across the Geoscape without being picked off by fighters? Slim, miniscule or none ?

So.. stealth C-5A's?

Ok, so in the next build the Chinook will be 50% faster and have just over 10% more range.

Sounds good, despite it already operating at twice the listed maximum speed, and fantastic range.

Maybe I'll be able to save Tokyo next time!

In-flight refueling can extend the range of a chinook helicopter in real life. Why not add some level of detail to include that. Many Nato countries could provide such a service. That also provides some stragetic thought when choosing locations for a new base.

cool with chinook, might be able to get home before those fighters spawn.

Any thoughts on set timers or a timer range for terror sites - say 3-5days.

At the moment they just despawn far too quickly. Especially if your about 2 hit or just returning from a crash site.

Didn't someone suggest to o it the x-com way? that the terror/crashsites wouldn't despawn if you had a transport inflight? I think Chris said he would look into that?

One base in North Africa, second base in southern Soviet and voila, you cover everything apart from the Americas with 2 Chinooks. Get some extra soldiers early on, train them, and this isn't really a problem. It's a freight chopper. It's not meant to go really fast.

IMHO, it's working just fine. Admittedly, I haven't started getting intercepted, haven't come across terrorsites and haven't got a 3rd base going yet, in most of my plays, due to research bug

Range is pretty good now. I like this setup... africom is my main base, americom and asiacom each have two radars (hey 1% long range is better than none) and a hangar. asia com gets another hangar and sits there, while americom after the months funding gets two hangars, a living quarters, stores, then medical bay and garage... aiming for a fourth so it can shoot down mediums at some point. I would have moved africom more to the SE, but oh well.

i am happy with the upgraded Chinook, it is more useful and makes timing day and night arrivals to mission sites easier.

I like the idea of keeping the range somewhat limited to force you to build new bases, however I would like to suggest that if you have a free hanger at your secondary base within range of a full Chinook flight, then instead of the Chinook returning to its own base after it has used half its fuel it could fly on to the other base and land in that hangar.

I would have really liked this when playing my first game of the demo and expanding. I had a developed base in Europe and a base under construction in America. However I didn't have enough money yet to fully equip it with tanks and soldiers. But the base was picking up a lot of UFO activity and it was annoying to shoot them down without being able to land there when the range of the Chinook would be able to get there if it didn't have to return to its own base.

cyberbeast's idea is interesting. i'm not sure if it's a good idea (expanding squads and thinning out experienced soldiers is part of xcom, being able to base hop too easily defeats that) but it makes sense.

How about the dropships get to use 100% of their fuel on the way to terror missions but must secure fuel after the mission is won, this could take 12-24 hours and then make their way back to base. Also some cost could be added for the fuel that is bought from the local airports.

that's an interesting idea from cybrbeast. It does make sense and the base in question would just treat it as any returning craft including any ammo shortages etc presumably.

you could leapfrog your way to far away missions.

you could escape pesky fighters, if you're lucky

I'm not sure it would terribly impede you extending the number of troops you have. Eventually, you're going to want quite a few spaced around, unless later craft allow you to get anywhere on the globe.

I can see it being annoying if you had little control over where the Chinook ended up after a mission.

How would it work with squadrons that contain a Chinook?

Currently you can have 2 interceptors and a dropship but Chris has suggested that it will eventually be 3.

Would one of your craft crash because you only had 3 spare hangars for your 4 craft?

Would the game just restrict your range without you being able to easily tell why as you would have a base that you couldn't use for some reason.

You would never be able to estimate how far your craft would be able to travel because going in one direction (towards another base) would leave you with more fuel to use than going in a slightly different one.

How about a base that had 7 spaces in its living quarters when you had 8 crew members?

Or a base with no garage facilities to contain the support vehicle on the dropship.

It sounds like a nice idea but there are an awful lot of things that would need to be taken into account.

That is just a list of ones that would make it difficult, not including ones that would make it undesirable like landing where there are no medical facilities, no ammo for your squad, vehicles, or escorts etc.

Cyberbeast's idea is along the same lines I've been thinking of:

Use your bases as a staging point, hopping the chinook from one to another to reach the crash site.

Not actually tried it to see if it's possible yet though.

It isn't.

Chris mentioned a while back that the craft are set to a hangar when you acquire them and that makes it impossible to let them hop between bases without a proper transfer mechanism.

Landing is disabled in the current build?

I beg to differ, I did manage to have a landed ufo mission, sent an F17 after it, it landed, and i just kept the F17 on it till the Chinook got there and started the mission.

I beg to differ, I did manage to have a landed ufo mission, sent an F17 after it, it landed, and i just kept the F17 on it till the Chinook got there and started the mission.

Which build is this Kestrat? When I posted that the patchnotes said that landing was disabled and no patchnotes since has said they have been reenabled. So untill you tell me which build you are playing I'll have to assume that you are playing an old build.

Ah, that's not really possible because of the code I'm afraid - aircraft are bound to their bases and still "fill" hangars when they are airborne. Shifting it around would cause no end of new work on the code.

Chinok is a transport chopper. It SHOULD be slow. However, it also should have quite a bit of range.

Maybe the fix would be for the nations to be a bit easier on you at the very start, given that they know your limited resources?