Does X:CE Change Air Game / Strategic Mode Significantly?

[Lohengramm]

I'm new to Xenonauts in general and jumped right into X:CE instead of playing vanilla.

I was looking over the included mod list and it doesn't seem like it does much to alter how air combat / strategic mode works fundamentally, though I'm not sure what the balancing portion might be doing in that regard.

It seems in the game I was playing recently that distributing bases to conduct air combat operations is VERY important and you should start doing this as early as possible. It seems like having 2 ground combat ready bases is actually a waste of resources compared to increasing your global air coverage in the early game.

Is this true? Is it specific to X:CE or just how Xenonauts plays in general? I'm used to standard XCOM where you don't need more than a handful of interceptor craft to save the world

[Solver]

X:CE has little effect on the Geoscape and air combat. One difference is that alien UFOs are a bit smarter. In the original version, they're really dumb. In air combat, they will lock on to a single target and follow it, so you can easily use a single plane as bait and hit the aliens with others. In X:CE, they will actually think about which planes to target.

Xenonauts is in general balanced towards higher importance of air combat. You're generally expected to attack UFOs with squadrons of 2 or 3 fighters. Their range is fairly limited so you need two bases quite early on to cover a reasonable part of the world, which is important because your income depends heavily on your ability to defend the airspace. Having two ground assault teams is largely a waste of money. Ground missions do not pay very well in comparison, and the income from being able to do more missions wouldn't help much given the cost of a second team. X:CE does not affect any of this.

[Lohengramm]

Hey thanks! That is exactly what I needed to know