Jump to content

The option to land your Charlie when chased by fighters


ooey

Recommended Posts

It's a lottery as to who survives when one gets shot down (your best troops could be on board) and at Veteran or above it really cripples you if you loose them, so I propose a button to land and abort the mission if you think your Charlie is the target.

The result? You loose the Charlie as you would if it was shot down (the UFOs kill it) the mission is aborted so you get no financial/skill gain, but all your troops turn up 72 hours later with the recovered chopper.

I don't think it would be too difficult to code this in, and it would be a logical addition (in the same way that Inteceptors make it back to base if they disengage due to lack of fuel - they stop off to refuel etc.). If you knew this is what would happen in real life you would do it!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Moved to CE as this is where it's likely to get attention.

EDIT: Wouldn't the obvious solution be to not make it a lottery at all? All the values are exposed for modding, so they can be adjusted and the file they are in is well documented.

Edited by Max_Caine
Link to comment
Share on other sites

What do you mean? Is the actual game not going to be touched anymore (just the CE)?

Thanks for moving this anyway. It just seems a lot to loose the chopper for 3 days AND your best troops. If you can see incoming fighters via the radar (and they are heading straight for your chopper) then it makes sense to land and disembark.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I don't see the value added in this. There'd be no point in fighters chasing transports if there was a button to cheap out. There are so many ways to mitigate the risk. And "real life" arguments don't hold up much here either - if it was real life, the fighters would strafe the landed chopper to bits.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I don't see the value added in this. There'd be no point in fighters chasing transports if there was a button to cheap out. There are so many ways to mitigate the risk. And "real life" arguments don't hold up much here either - if it was real life, the fighters would strafe the landed chopper to bits.

Yes they would, but the game rules are that the chopper comes back into your inventory after 72 hours(?). So you don't have the use of it for 3 days (which can be critical on the higher levels). The premise is that if you KNOW you are being followed, you'd ditch the chopper and the troops would be rescued later with its remains. However, it seems that if you equip your troops with Wolf armour (and the like) they are more likely to survive, which helps. Being a helicopter though, means it can land anywhere except water, so why not make this feature available?

I have seen people saying that the aliens are not aggressive enough (!). I'm not sure what level those that are saying that are playing on. I'm a veteran of these sorts of games, and all I can say is there is little room for error when playing Veteran Ironman mode. Chris and the team have got the balance almost perfect.

Edited by ooey
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I don't see the value added in this. There'd be no point in fighters chasing transports if there was a button to cheap out.

There's no point in fighters chasing transports anyhow, IMO, aside from adding micromanagement that has no effect 99+% of the time. (I'm near the end of my second play-through. In each play-through, I've gone out to over 100 ground combats. I don't escort transports and only one has ever been shot down. One actually needing escorts in >200 missions flown is >99.5% which didn't need escorts.)

It's also not terribly practical, given that interceptors have operational flight times on the order of a few hours, while transports can stay airborne for something like a day and a half - I'll frequently have them stop off to clear 3-4 crash sites, sometimes making a full trip around the globe in the process, before returning to base. Coordinating ongoing fighter coverage over that entire trip would be tricky, at best, given the lack of tools available in the Xenonauts interface. (e.g., It won't tell you how far the current escort can get before running low on fuel or when to launch a new escort to take over at that point.)

Instead, my strategy is just to prioritize intercepting alien ships that are anywhere near a transport and, if it looks dicey, try to buy extra time for interception by evading with the transport.

And "real life" arguments don't hold up much here either - if it was real life, the fighters would strafe the landed chopper to bits.

If you don't wait until the absolute last moment before grounding the chopper, the troops would have plenty of time to ditch the chopper and scatter before the alien ships arrived. "Let's hang out in the chopper after grounding it to avoid interception" would be suicidally stupid.

ooey: As hinted at by Max_Caine, it's fairly easy and straightforward to mod the game so that troops have a 100% chance of surviving the transport being shot down, and that's something you can do today without needing to wait for code changes.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

>>If you don't wait until the absolute last moment before grounding the chopper, the troops would have plenty of time to ditch the chopper and scatter before the alien ships arrived

Well. I can propose a mission with aliens attacking landed helicopter with ground forces.

Edited by KOKON
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...