Leaderboard

Wait, wait. I have to disagree completely. Since i hardly played the vanilla aircombat i cant remember it, but X-Division made so much more out of it. Hell, even XNT made it into a formidable and funny game to relax your nerves. The vanilla aircombat was nothing more than basic, but it had all its potential to be put into one of the best ever made arcade aircombat. From here on out its a detailed description of the X-Division aircombat. Skip if you dont want to read it. Fundamentally there are 5 types of aircraft dogfighters - 2 cannons, fast, agile and nimble, dodge bombers - heavy torpedo carrier, slow and slow to turn hybrids - 1 cannon + 1 missile, your typical jack of all trades, master of none, very fast, low hp, semi bombers - this depends on the phase, but ranges from fast non-dodging 2 missile aircraft over to 1 missile 1 torpedo and able to dodge aircraft super aircraft - depending on phase, but it gets an additional weapon slot, ranging from 2 cannon + 1 missile to 2 missile + 1 torpedo, the production of this kind of aircraft is limited by rare resources and is standardly hidden for players, superior stats Here is a rundown on aircombat cannon weaponry: autocannon: standart range, standar dps, higher total damage ( standart autocannon research + assimilated alien beams ) close encounter weapon: very short range, insanely high dps, low total damage ( mauser, focuslense, focusblast, shortcircuit ) zoning weapon: high rate of fire, good range, higher than 180 degree coverage, low total damage, average dps ( sonarpulse, sonicthruster, particlepulse ) long range weaponry: very long range, very small firing arc, low rate of fire, mediocre projectile speed ( can be dodged, evaded under circumstances ) ( spearcannon, corvettespearcannon, cruiserspearcannon, battlecruiserspearcannon ) missiles: missile - normal range, normal dps, normal total damage ( sidewinder, aleniummissile, plasmamissile, fusionmissile, singularmissile ) anti-missile - eliminates incoming missiles and torpedos (antimissile, titaniummissile, blacktitmissile, particleantimissile ) spawner missile - splits total damage into smaller missiles to attempt to overload anti-missile systems when present, lower total damage ( hypermissie, lowsonicmissile, warpmissiles ) mines - well ... mines, can be outrun by walking speed, very high range, good total damage, but you will have to bait the UFO into them ( minimines, stealthmines ) piranhas - close quarter, high fire rate, high dps, low total damage, low range ( piranha, particlepiranha ) torpedos: normal torpedo: normal range, damage, dps, total damage ( avalanche, aleniumtorpedo, plasma- , fusion- , singularitytorpedo ) long range torpedo: very high range, higher total damage, low rate of fire, ( gravity- , neutrino- , particletorpedo ) There are too many UFOs to be made to name, but here are a few features from which you could make your own. standard forward beam: average everything fighter beam: high rate of fire, high dps, lower range standart alien missile: average everything but higher damage and lower rate of fire fighter anti missile system: anti missile system with top of the art fire rate against missiles and torpedos, cant be overloaded cruiser anti missiles: good range, low firing speed, can be overloaded Long range spear cannon: very very long range "spear" projectile, fast projectile speed, very low rate of fire, narrow firing arc drones: homing in drones which can be countered with anti missiles, high speed, unlimited turn rate, long range etc ... The very basic aircombat system can be described like this ( blue is Xenonauts, while purplse means alien assets ): And thats just what we did with the code which was already available. No give me functioning armour coding for UFOs and we could talk again ... . Here is a 44 minutes preparation of how to take on a terror battleship in X-Division: And thats just scratching the surface. 1 UFO out of 39 ( although 1 is unbeatable ). In a nutshell i think there is a lot of room to improve. Seriously, taking a single side look to any other arcade aircombat game will make you overflow with ideas. Currently there are a lot of popular mobile aircombat games available, as a source of inspiration. The reason why people complain is simply because most people who like turn based games, like them, because they dont like to do something which requires fast reflexes ( like turning a plane at the right moment ). They like turn based things because the are not ... real time stress. And the combined group of people who like arcade aircombat and turn based gameplay at the same time is propably smaller than either of them. So i will propably have to support @dragesclaim that people who play XCOM play it for their ground combat missions. If you dont want to limit the player base who wants to get into the ground combat you cant make the aircombat too skill intensive ( like X-Division does ). But when its too easy people will complain it will be too repetetive. So i think whatever you do you could propably think about an "autoresolve" solution ( but not the X1 model ), or a simple visual representation like UFO Aftermath did. Because the aircombat is only there for people to get into the ground combat. I personally like the triumvirat of Ground Combat ( turn based ), Geoscape ( real time, managing ) and Aircombat ( real time twitch skills ) for psychological reason i could write you one or two scientific papers about. But for most people easier is better ^^. Against popular believe i like the FiraXCOM Enemy Unknown aircombat model quite well. Easy to understand, easy to execute and everything is just dice based. Big explosions and good visual representation. Propably one of the best approaches to the genre, and very similar to UFO aftermath, with some spice.

X1 had tactical air combat, but it wasn't particularly deep tactics. If the autoresolve wasn't 100%, take over, fly behind the enemy, and then deliver the entire ordinance into the back of the enemy. Repeat Repeat Repeat There's very little change between air combats, and there's a lot of them.