'Target Lost' Alert

[NeutralGround]

Ive read the whole suggestions forum and i cant seem to find anything on this, although to me it seemed reasonably obvious.

Scenario:

UFO is flying around on the edge of a base's radar range.

You send a single F-17 to intercept. He tails for a bit, but soon bingos fuel and has to RTB.

You send a second interceptor out but half way en route, the UFO disappears.

First there is no way of telling whether the UFO has just flown out of range of radar or whether it has gone back to outer space.

So you want to send the interceptor to its 'LAST KNOWN POSITION' to attempt to ping it visually.

In XCOM, as soon as the UFO disappeared the 'UFO LOST' window would appear and options would appear:

move to last known postion

Patrol

return to base

..or something to that effect.

Either way selecting any of these options reduces the time scale to 5 secs - to prevent wasting precious seconds letting the offending UFO escape further away.

Also, having the window appear, stops the interceptor from immediately returning to base - or essentially flying roughly in opposite direction to the last known position of the UFO - which is devastating to your ability to end up catching it again.

Yes?

[anotherdevil]

Sounds like a plan!

[Sathra]

Sounds good. Wonder why this never really got brought up before...

[Guest]

Ive read the whole suggestions forum and i cant seem to find anything on this, although to me it seemed reasonably obvious.

Scenario:

UFO is flying around on the edge of a base's radar range.

You send a single F-17 to intercept. He tails for a bit, but soon bingos fuel and has to RTB.

You send a second interceptor out but half way en route, the UFO disappears.

First there is no way of telling whether the UFO has just flown out of range of radar or whether it has gone back to outer space.

So you want to send the interceptor to its 'LAST KNOWN POSITION' to attempt to ping it visually.

In XCOM, as soon as the UFO disappeared the 'UFO LOST' window would appear and options would appear:

move to last known postion

Patrol

return to base

..or something to that effect.

Either way selecting any of these options reduces the time scale to 5 secs - to prevent wasting precious seconds letting the offending UFO escape further away.

Also, having the window appear, stops the interceptor from immediately returning to base - or essentially flying roughly in opposite direction to the last known position of the UFO - which is devastating to your ability to end up catching it again.

Yes?

I remember this feature being in X-COM: Interceptor.

Yes, indeed...

[Nuttss]

I'll second this one... I ran into this problem as well but somehow didn't make the mental connection that it was a missing feature.

[KOKON]

I think it should not only be the radar. Target Lost should appear even if is not so far. It can go back into space etc

[NeutralGround]

If it goes back into space, then there would be no point tracking its last known position. If however, there are other reasons why a pinged UFO my dissappear, like for example i always thought it strange a UFO could be picked by radar, when it had landed. Radar cannot ping any instance or object at too low an altitude - certainly not ground level. So there if a UFO chooses to land it should dissappear from radar. In this case, it would be neccessary to send an interceptor or SUPER-FAST SPY DRONE(nudge, nudge) to ping the UFO again visually.

[Sathra]

I suggested that a while ago. While it makes sense, gameplay-wise its just annoying. Especially if the UFO is on a mission that involves it landing and taking off multiple times. It'd get lost and re-acquired multiple times, setting off alerts every time.

Especially since there could be a dozen UFO mission groups on the Geoscape at the same time.

[NeutralGround]

Good point. I would require bulks amounts of recon....Unless.....at some point into research GPS uplinks become available!!! Then you can scan certain areas of the geoscape for hidden/stealthed UFOs! But of course the GPS is in space and there's copious amounts of UFOs getting about up there, so that would mean you would need to get research and construct some kind of GIANT ORBITAL DEFENSE PLATFORM!!!! Once they are built, ......meh. Maybe in Xenonauts 2.

Especially since there could be a dozen UFO mission groups on the Geoscape at the same time.

I tend to remember this happening in Enemy Unknown a few times especially during the terrorise missions from the large UFOs. Also towards the end - the influx of new UFO's into the atmosphere was so rapid it was impossible to track and destroy them all and the alerts setting offevery time one of them entered the geoscape was just overwheming.

I still think - although I cant come up with any ideas right this second - the UFO detection features of XCOM were underdone. I mean, known the game was old, but i still think there is a load that could be done in that area.

[Sathra]

Yeah, the current mission design for Xenonauts is for the UFO's to come in 'waves'. Instead of a steady trickle, there would a splurge of multiple mission groups (each being 1-3 UFO's) once a week. Or maybe slower. Or faster.

There's also an semi-economy planned for the aliens too. They get new UFO's at various intervals, and the missions are made of the UFO's it's got available. So the more you miss, the bigger the next wave can be (or at least the more resilient the aliens are to losses). So shooting down more UFO's should make it easier for you strategically, compared to most X-com alikes where it made it harder.

[Chris]

Sathra - the number of UFOs in each wave that spawn is set by the alien ticker. The higher it is, the more UFOs spawn. If a UFO escapes to space during combat there should be something like a 75% chance it will reappear in the next wave and try to complete its mission. I need to check if that's implemented, actually...I'm not sure it is.

For a Target Lost alert, I guess it would make sense for one to appear if an interceptor is targeting a UFO and it flies outside detection range. I think currently if the UFO goes beyond detection range the interceptors will continue to track it using their amazing psychic powers, but it's better we add an alert here. If the UFO disappears into space that should also be mentioned. I've sent a feature request to the coder and hopefully it'll be in for V8.3 or V8.4 as it'd be best to have this in place for the press build.

[Straker]

Sounds good. Wonder why this never really got brought up before...

I know I wouldn't think of suggesting something already in X-Com and I couldn't be sure if someone was already planning on adding a particular feature later as the game develops.

[Sathra]

@Chris: Ah, okay. Wasn't sure if the alien economy was still in. But doing well slows the ticker I guess? That would have a similar result (doing well making the game easier rather than harder).

[NeutralGround]

I think currently if the UFO goes beyond detection range the interceptors will continue to track it using their amazing psychic powers

Right. So when the UFO disappears and the interceptor continues fly after the it, this means the UFO has not gone back to outer space, but has just flown out of detection range?

I ask because there are times when, after the UFO disappears the interceptor flying out to catch it will instantly RTB. I'm guessing in these instances, its because the interceptor pilot 'knows' that the UFO has returned to space and so chooses not to continue tracking it?