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I was wondering if it would be too late at this point to include a final air combat mission? Basically, this would involve piloting your dropship so that it makes contact with the dreadnought. If you do this, then the final ground mission starts. If not, then the game is lost.

Hi guys, I've had a look and can't locate anything. But is there a way to get more than 3 fights in combat at once?

Suggestion: Increase range of weapons, and slow weapon trajectory down to make game play more tactical rather than twitch based.

Okay, so I fired up the new 20.7, sped the time up and a light scout shows up. I send a squadron of my two starter condors to intercept. After chasing it in circles and burning most of my fuel, the scout makes a 180 degree turn and I'm in business. Once my planes close to firing range, I notice condor 2 isn't facing the UFO, but is instead heading for the dotted line in front of the UFO. I know this is normal at longer distances, but the UFO is close enough to be in C2's firing arc (if it was going in the right direction). Both of my condors shoot their missiles correctly (and miss, I forgot to stutter the launches), but condor 2 unloads all cannon ammo at the dotted line instead of the ufo. I clicked on Condor 2 and then clicked on the UFO (to manually target) several times while it was firing, but it would only target and fire at the UFO's trajectory. Also, Condor 1 ran out of fuel well before 2 (2 had about 14% left), which I think is strange since they left as a single unit squadron and should have burned the same amount of fuel. I doubt it matters, but before my squadron engaged the target, 2 more light scouts showed up and one landed, and my Charlie was enroute to the landing site when this strange air battle took place.

Top of the morning to you! I have this happen quite a bit. When I am using a foxtrot to lead an alien ship on a merry chase, if I have set the speed to minimum earlier in the combat, then maximum, then afterburn: when the afterburner is turned off the speed drops to a well under max speed 450ish, while the speed selector has only dropped slightly from the top. Sorry, no screen shot for this one.

This is early game. I researched the Foxtrot in a hurry only to find out it has no cannon. Anything better than a Light Scout I can't seem to handle with the Condors. Any advice would be appreciated, or if there's a thread on this topic already point me in that direction. Thanks!

Hi The pop up for bingo fuel came up and I selected retreat. The condor chose to fly to the furthest corner to escape and ran out of fuel before it reached the edge of the screen. Also, It is quite annoying sitting and watching those retreats. How about a speed up time button for air combat?

Hiya When you enter combat condors go at 1500 km/h, but if you select full speed they drop to 1218 km/h. Also, there is no way to re-select auto speed control. Edit: The same kind of thing happens with the foxtrot.

I keep wishing for this and that for air combat but that is only because I like the concept that much Every detail it gets make it that much sweeter and the game more interesting since it takes some pressure off of the ground combat having to deliver almost all the entertainment (Geoscape is there to help out though). So here are two ideas that may not have been mentioned before: - Information on system health for planes within combat showing which system has been damaged and level of damage. I am not sure when exactly the gun is unusable and what the yellow marks on the hull actually mean. The information could be visible when hovering over the marked units on the hull display on the right hand side of the screen - Statistics for each plane visible in the hangar equipment screen on how many UFOs it has shot down per category (maybe some nice icon instead of the name of the category) - This is nothing game play changing but spices up the hangar where 90% of the screen is static and quickly becomes irrelevant/becomes uninteresting even faster then that since weapons are swapped automatically when upgraded, no ammo micro MGMT and all info is visible in Geoscape Air combat really deserves some love since it is the component that takes the original a step further in the right direction. Similar games failed with this concept but the idea here feels truly like a development of the original concept instead of rethinking it and making it less complex. It feels UFO air combat 2.0

The only thing in the game that i currently dislike is the air combat. Dont get me wrong, I actually LIKE the tactical elements and its mechanics and love the oldskool radar look of it. In fact 1 on 1 it works fine but i loath the PAUSE SPAMMING you need to do when there are multiple aircraft :-/ And auto resolve drives me nuts too, battles that i 100% win manually are sometimes losses, and it just seems odd when you put 3 planes against 1 enemy and autoresolve makes them all come out partially damaged when you know you will have 1 plane massively damaged and the other 2 unscratched if you fought the battle manually. It is also sometimes difficult to rapidly tell which box on the right corresponds to which aircraft, perhaps this could be made clearer with easier to see tags on the aircraft or 3 different colours but thats another issue. My idea is to have a slow mode, maybe even a few so you could have air battles go at 1/2 speed, 1/4 speed, 1/8 speed, whatever ratio works. This allows the battle to "flow" whilst giving you time to control multiple aircraft and avoids the god-damn pause spamming. Of couse still having a pause button would allow both types of play to exist, im not suggesting its complete removal just options to slow the combat speed down for those busy fights. P.S. everything else in this game rocks! bugs are being squished and the gameplay gets better and better each build. Cheers & thanks for listening.

so, this happens: 2 interceptors + cruiser fight, me with 2 condors and a fox, kite the cruiser with the fox engage interceptors with condors, shoot them down nuke cruiser with torps + the 2 condors from behind, so far so good cept the damn ship doesnt go down, ok no biggie ill just fly away refuel rearm and come back. fly to a safe distance an click x.... the condors turn around and fly towards the cruiser with no guns fox makes it out the cruiser turns to face the condors and annihilates them without me bein able to do anything since im leavin the combat and the condors arent takin any more instructions, cannot reroute em (i had plenty of fuel left since this happened next to my base) they happily fly into the cruisers range. not sure if this really is a bug but i must say this felt kinda dumb. maybe allow me to cancel the retreat order or something?

I threw together another quick air combat video. No commentary added to it (I'm looking to eventually do a proper air combat tutorial), but I remembered to actually show my mouse this time so you can have a better view of what I'm actually doing. My play is a bit sloppy here, and I just showed a few early game engagements with starter weapons but the same tactics work later in the game if you keep your weapons upgraded. Anyway, here it is. [video=youtube_share;kbX77G9x2_c]

Well just got as far as having carriers, bombers and strike cruisers start showing up, I have a total of 9 condors with alenium and lasers and a pair of foxtrots with alenium torps. Any suggestions for dealing with the big stuff or am I boned?

Can anyone explain how to shoot down 3 fighters aliens?

Could you guys tell me how that thing actually works? Ive used it on several Foxtrot vs Fighter squads... and won... without a scratch. I tried wining it manually and its hard, if not impossible. A corsair and 2 migs get a landing ship with escorts, also without a scratch. 2 migs against 3 fighters? You CANT win that, auto-resolve does - with 66% hp left on the migs... lol. Does it calculate the $ cost of the aircraft versus the enemy one to determine the outcome? The purpose of the auto-resolve is a mystery to me, so Im not critisizing, just curious how it works.

I can't look now, I'm at work. But if someone could inform ME by posting some AARs;)...

I restarted an attack against 3 alien fighters with everything from 3 foxtrots to one foxtrot and two Condors, but I cannot with the battle anyway and always lose at least one plane. They are faster and shoot farther than my planes. My usual technique against multiple targets is to split my force, destroy one with the foxtrot that is then used as a decoy for the other two. but this does not work against 3 fighters, because they shoot before the foxtrot which cannot dodge. Sending in a Condor with its short missile range is suicide against these fighters, because the Condor can only dodge the first missile and the second one usually comes before the Condor is within its missile range. After failing a half dozen tries, I decided to ignore them, since fighters cannot land aliens.

Do you eventually research better missiles? Currently the foxtrot and its avalanche missiles are disappointing. I was expecting two avalanche missiles to deal a lot more damage than an entire condor can with its cannons and sidewinders. And how many condors and foxtrots do you guys keep in your bases?

Shoot down the escorts, disengage from the fight, reangage, shoot down main craft. This way the CTD that seemingly only occurs if an escorted craft is downed, doesn't kick in.

Hello, this is sort of repeatable, involves 1 small (obviously scout), and two fighters. I scrambled two Mig [foxtrot] and one f17 [condor], manual combat with regular sidewinder-avalanche(s) resulted in successful kill(s). Then CTD... In this one, condor suffered some "damages" Later twice sorties [same manual, loadout combination], but with alienium enhanced sidewinder-avalanche(s). CTD. with this combination, no aircraft suffered any damages (obviously due to quick shot-downing the alien ships). R yikes, same goes with medium [corvette], escorted by two very small [fighters], manual combat and CTD, after successfull kills.

So back when I was playing X-COM 1994, if I lost an Interceptor, it was bad times. I had to buy a new one, and new Avalanche missiles and such. But it wasn't a deal breaker if a UFO blew it away. I could buy a new one in two days, and the Avalanche missiles were quite good. But I kept playing. In this game, I load my save.

I think that if you send one plane to attack a UFO then you should be able to call for backup, like if you call for backup it take a short [or long] time for them to get here Although this is just an idea I would love to see this system in the game Thanks!

A few weeks we had a heated debate (I.e flame war) over air combat and it was eventually decided that an auto resolve option would be implemented but people would still be allowed to play it if they wanted. I have not played Experimental Build 5 but I played 4, and it felt like the Air Combat mini-game was made impossibly difficult in an attempt to turn public opinion against it. Missiles now had a range of automatic weapons, meaning you had to get up close and personal with the aliens. This was bad enough with Interceptors, but at least those could evasive roll. I never built a MiG because my files kept corrupting and crashing but I'm assuming they have to get close too, and since they can't dodge I assume you'd be losing you MiG every time. Even before this, alien craft always targeted the MiGs almost as if they knew they'd be taken out for sure. I still think that the solution to saving Air Combat is to break up the monotony. Give MiGs the ability to dodge. If you thought the missile range was too long (I agree, I could usually blast a UFO with a pair of MiGs and escape before the alien craft could even react). And instead of having all the planes come in from the same location, have them come from different points, so the UFO might have an easier time of targeting one. I still think there is plenty that could be done to save Air Combat, and us flight simulator adherents still really want to see this implemented in the game.

Overview: So after running through a bunch of air combats with the game I started wondering about approach the developers are taking for the air combat. I like a lot of the ideas in the game and I think that the overall implementation is pretty great. It's definitely more challenging, deeper, and fun for a lot of people. After reading a lot of forum posts, there seems to be three camps: 1. The people who are actually good at the air combat and like it to be difficult 2. The people who develop tactics to that work around the difficulty (three Foxtrots, hit and fade, rinse, repeat) 3. The people who are like me, who haven't quite figured it out (and may not!) Past Approach: To take a quick look at the "roots" of Xenonauts, the X-COM approach was a simpler air combat format. The aircraft were destructible. They either had to be rebuilt or you had to order a new one. With each era of the game, assuming you were keeping up with research, you had very reasonable chance at bringing down a UFO in a single or perhaps two engagements. With this system, the player got to decide whether it was worth the sacrifice of an aircraft to bring down a target. Repair times were long. Current Approach: With Xenonauts, the focus seems to be on multiple engagements per UFO. Even the people who say they love the combat and are good at it say so. "Don't be afraid to re-engage in four hours!" Yes, I know that approach works, but that's means several times the number of air engagements per UFO. Is that the intent of the system? I'm not sure. General Comments: I find the air battles in the beginning of the game to be exciting and fun. By the time the second or third month rolls around, the difficulty spikes way higher and it becomes very frustrating for me. Having to do that all the time makes it tedious. At that point, I just want it to be over so I can get to the parts of the game I do like. And there's plenty I like about this game. It seems obvious that at least one of the reasons they introduced the "free" fighters was that air combat was so devastating. Losing three fighter craft would basically ruin the game, it's pretty tough to recover $350,000 on top of the inability to actually shoot down UFOs, which is one of the primary ways you make money. Suggestion: Down here at the bottom, if you made it this far past my wall of text, I do have a suggestion that would hopefully help each of the three groups of players have fun with the game. Assuming there will be no changes to the gameplay elements, my best suggestion is as follows: Decouple the air combat difficulty. Have one for the overall game, and one for air combat. That way, each player can fine-tune their experience. ----- Thanks for reading. And thanks to Goldhawk for all their effort. There's a lot of good here, and I hope that the game is successful beyond all imagining.

So, realism nags us, and tells us that there are more than two hardpoints on an F-16. I agree that we need a good explanation as to why things are the way they are. (ie, why only two missiles?) First, we have the Condor: F-16s have three hardpoints under each wing (six total), one on each wing tip (2 total), and three under the belly. We can say that the three hardpoints under the belly were removed/replaced in favor of adding a permanent expanded fuel system (seems simple enough to me; plus it echos what happened to the Foxtrot). The wingtips are easy; these carry Air-to-Air Missiles (like the game currently has). In the Xenopedia photos it shows the Condor with two AAMs on the wingtips, and two other objects under the wings. I propose these objects are Xenonaut Sensor Pods, something I just invented to explain why these aircraft can detect UFOs and Alien Bases so well. This leaves the other four hardpoints under the wings unaccounted for, both realism wise and in the photo the Xenopedia shows. I'd assume that they either: a) removed these hardpoints to decrease weight and drag, and to increase fuel efficiency and speed, or b) they could simply carry external fuel tanks all the time, to help the Condor have it's incredible range (considering the relatively short ranged F-16). Or a combination of the two (removed two hardpoints, used the other two for fuel tanks). On to the Foxtrot: So, the MiG-31 could carry four heavy missiles under the belly, and various missiles under the wings. Initially the Foxtrot had four heavy missile slots, actually. However, having four missiles made it overpowered in gameplay, so it's payload was reduced to two missiles/torpedoes. Why would this be, realism wise? Well, we can simply explain that the four missile hardpoints under the belly were removed/replaced to increase fuel capacity through permanent external tank additions to the underbelly, just like the Condor. For the hardpoints under the wings, two are used for the heavy torpedoes, and the rest were either removed to reduce drag and increase fuel efficiency and speed (every bit counts when you're chasing UFOs) or used for external drop tanks, same reasoning as the Condor. Now, many of you know that the MiG-31 had a built in cannon. As far as the gun goes, we can say that they removed it because the space was needed for a better sensors package (basically they put the Xenonaut Sensor Pod inside the aircraft, to reduce drag on the outside to enable higher speeds for intercepting faster UFOs). Sound decent? Not too unrealistic, I hope.