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AWACS v1 - Final Release


dskzz

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A suggestion: Use Saracen assets allready in the game to introduce a mid-game surveillance alternative to the Awacs

Thoughts on the Saracen as a survelliance craft

- it becomes available shortly after the Corsair

- its cost to manufacture ($,alloys,alenium) is comparable to Corsair

- it has shorter radar range than the Awacs, but longer than any other aircraft

- it is unarmed

- it is faster than Corsairs but slower than Marauders

This opens some interesting mid-game tactical and strategic options:

- send a slow and vulnerable Awacs to patrol or send a faster Saracen (but with less radar range)

- send a Saracen as an "advance scout" before your intercepters - to better track UFO´s that leave radar range of your bases?

- expand to several bases to gain global coverage and fast response times to UFO´s, or consolidate in a few and better defended bases and use Saracens to expand global radar coverage?

EDIT: And of course - with this mod - Aliens bases should have an auto-detect chance of 0%... You wont find them unless you send out your craft to search for them...

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Yes, the mod really gives some leeway in strategy. It is cheaper way to find aliens outside of your base's range and allows you to "find" crafts not in your radar range.

And it balances out nicely: the search is active (ie you have to look for it and rely on reports), costs a lot and does not extend your aircrafts' range.

If I can have only one request is to please update the link with a more up-to-date version of the mod and one more friendly to the latest version's mod intaller. When I tried to use the launcher's mod installer the option to buy AWACS just didn't show up. Plus, there is the air-force icon still on the wings (as for the Xenonaut's icon, I'd just use the alien-skull).

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  • 4 weeks later...
NOTE - I also included a file _readme_what_to_add.xlsx which has the lines and which files they were added to, so you can manually add the stuff in yourself. Which is helpful if you have like the Lore Mod, you can go in and add all the acas stuff easily. I hope that this becomes the norm for mods, because installing one mod that overwrites all your changes sucks! This lets you see what to add and where.

You know, this is a pretty good idea. Just one problem: Not everybody has Excel, which is a paid-for product. I think that getting this ball rolling, you should standardize on XML code to be inserted into whatever file with a text editor (such as Notepad++, or in a pinch, Notepad.)

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  • 6 years later...

I've found some issues with this. 6 years late, I know, but still.

First, when the AWACs is patrolling an area, it seems to continually rise in altitude, reaching heights of stuff like 600,000m. This is kinda silly since the real life AWACs plane only has a service ceiling of 8,800m. I believe the altitude also causes a problem with the AWACs detecting things in its radius, but I'm not certain.

Second is that the AWACs slows down any squadrons it's with to a crawl. Yes, the real life AWACs isn't very fast, but this highly limits the plane's usefulness in-game. Even if it's with a squadron when they engage the enemy, the plane doesn't show up. I know that it's because the AWACs has no weapons, but I think it should be given access to a single cannon slot. If possible, maybe even make it so the cannon is rear-facing, making it a poor choice in tackling UFOs and only really useful for firing a few shots at a pursuing attacker. I'd edit that in myself, but I don't know how to make it work right.

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