Refuelling and rearming times are way too long

[Emily_F]

I've noted that the refuelling time (several hours!!) and rearming times are way too excessive; unrealistically so.  Please could that be looked at?

[Kakrafoon]

Maybe there should be a research item named something like "streamlined turnaround times" for the interceptors that turns your ground crews into the equivalent of a formula one pit stop team...

[Alienkiller]

Aircrafts have a lot of Fuel, and if you Fuel up such an Interceptor you will take about 20 to 30 Minutes. Rearming need an similar Time too if you don´t want an explosion and wounded Personal. And for the Checking for Damages incl. Repairs you need the most Hours. The last one you mean, but that do the Hanger-Crew automatically after the Interceptor landed.

Evtl. with Researches you can reduce that time (2 or 3 Times). If I remember me correctly, there were an Research later on to reduce that time drastically.

Edited October 31, 2022 by Alienkiller

[Emily_F]

47 minutes ago, Alienkiller said:

Aircrafts have a lot of Fuel, and if you Fuel up such an Interceptor you will take about 20 to 30 Minutes. Rearming need an similar Time too if you don´t want an explosion and wounded Personal. And for the Checking for Damages incl. Repairs you need the most Hours. The last one you mean, but that do the Hanger-Crew automatically after the Interceptor landed.

Evtl. with Researches you can reduce that time (2 or 3 Times). If I remember me correctly, there were an Research later on to reduce that time drastically.

That's the point, AK.  It currently takes many hours to refuel and rearm.  In fact, refuelling seems to take the longest by far.  However, it only takes 10 mins to refuel a fighter jet IRL, and 30 mins to rearm most ground-based fighter/interceptors.  So, in-game it should take no more than 1-2 hours IN TOTAL.    

[Kakrafoon]

Maybe the hours-long delay is supposed to also include maintenance on the plane and mandatory downtime for the pilot, but yeah, it is ridiculous to ground a plane for hours when the airspace is filled with targets.

[Chris]

Yeah, this is something that people regularly point out as being unrealisic and did the same in Xenonauts 1.

The problem with realistic refuelling / rearming times is that the winning strategy then always becomes just to load your planes up with the longest range missiles possible and just keeping flying back and forth to the UFOs until even the biggest UFOs go down under a hail of missiles (you don't even need more than one interceptor, you just need to do enough attack runs). Which is overpowered and kinda boring for the player.

The only answer to that from a game design perspective is to ensure that every UFO has longer range weapons than all human weapons, so there's a health cost to each attack run. But again that's not hugely interesting for the player. And people also don't seem to like long repair times, so even that might not have the intended effect.

Happy to listen to alternatives but I'm not sure there are any that don't involve fundamentally redesigning the air combat. I suppose we could set the UFOs to steadily repair themselves while flying around on the Geoscape so doing endless attack runs against a UFO wouldn't be viable?

[Twigg]

2 hours ago, Chris said:

The problem with realistic refuelling / rearming times is that the winning strategy then always becomes just to load your planes up with the longest range missiles possible and just keeping flying back and forth to the UFOs until even the biggest UFOs go down under a hail of missiles (you don't even need more than one interceptor, you just need to do enough attack runs). Which is overpowered and kinda boring for the player.

That is already the best strategy, the difference the long rearming/refueling time makes is that you have to go into each air combat with overwhelming force to ensure you can kill the UFO (or main UFO if there are multiple) in one attack. It's simultaneously frustrating and funny letting UFOs run rampant on the map well within radar range because you know you don't have the firepower to kill it and you don't want to lose the opportunity to shoot down another ship that you can actually kill and generate a mission from.

The combination of long research time and the need to build and equip each individual weapon means you don't really have the opportunity to experience with less efficient combinations. Even the loss of dodge doesn't have an impact because you will quickly fight UFOs that fire much faster than your dodge cooldown will allow so face tanking UFO fire is a necessity. 

I have no idea how to fix regular missiles but for the guns I recommend that they increase your speed in combat and they either hit incredibly hard or do increasing damage the closer they get. That plus either giving fighters equipped with them an innate dodge chance or giving UFOs blind spots will open up an interesting and viable alternative to the torpedo meta.

 

[Emily_F]

14 minutes ago, Twigg said:

That is already the best strategy, the difference the long rearming/refueling time makes is that you have to go into each air combat with overwhelming force to ensure you can kill the UFO (or main UFO if there are multiple) in one attack. It's simultaneously frustrating and funny letting UFOs run rampant on the map well within radar range because you know you don't have the firepower to kill it and you don't want to lose the opportunity to shoot down another ship that you can actually kill and generate a mission from.

The combination of long research time and the need to build and equip each individual weapon means you don't really have the opportunity to experience with less efficient combinations. Even the loss of dodge doesn't have an impact because you will quickly fight UFOs that fire much faster than your dodge cooldown will allow so face tanking UFO fire is a necessity. 

I have no idea how to fix regular missiles but for the guns I recommend that they increase your speed in combat and they either hit incredibly hard or do increasing damage the closer they get. That plus either giving fighters equipped with them an innate dodge chance or giving UFOs blind spots will open up an interesting and viable alternative to the torpedo meta.

 

That is a fair point, but with larger UFOs, esp with escorts, you get hammered even if your fighters are decent, armed with decent weapons and well armoured. 

[Chris]

33 minutes ago, Twigg said:

That is already the best strategy, the difference the long rearming/refueling time makes is that you have to go into each air combat with overwhelming force to ensure you can kill the UFO (or main UFO if there are multiple) in one attack.

Yeah, but that sounds like an issue we can fix by tweaking the numbers on the other weapons so they become a more viable alternative to torpedoes.

Whereas fast rearm / refuel means that torpedoes would be the dominant weapons even if they were substantially weaker than other weapons, just because you can initiate multiple combats with them and repeatedly inflict damage without taking any in return. That's a fundamental issue that no amount of tweaking numbers can fix, it would require some change to the mechanics.

[Alienkiller]

The individual Weapons, Armors and other special Things for the Fighters are very good. That makes the Difference to 08/15-Mainstream-Games.

That you have to research & develop that with different Times are very good and get new Features as big Bonuses. That makes the Games of that Gerne great, beginning with the new XCOM in 2012. And as Prototype-Platforms in that the old X-COM Apocalypse / UFO-ET-Row.

The Mix of Weapons & Armors incl. Upgrades like the Accelerator-Upgrade to Standard-Weapons give you an big Experiance with a lot of efficent combinations. Your Fighters (dosen´t matter what Tech you are using) will ever be 2 or 3 Steps behind the Aliens. The Tech (Weapons / Protection) you will use beginns from outgunned up to at the End approximately equivalent.

The Beta-Testers can test it out since the complete refited Airfights from X1 come back after all good new Ideas were Scrap. There you beginn since the more advanced Beta-Game-Status come out (V.23 / V.24) with Dogfights against small Alien Crafts and get a lot in the puss. Esp. when you fight later the better light UFOs / medium UFOs.  

The Guns work now different, which is good. AP-Piercing Guns (like the Gattling, magnetig upgraded Gattling in the beginning etc. later on) work completely different to the Engergy-Weapons (Laser, Plasma etc.).

The same for Rockets and Torpedos. The Rockets are good for lighter / faster UFOs and Torpedos are better for medium / heavy UFOs which are slower. They are the Key to bring an UFO down or damage it very hard that the Guns can do the remaining.

The same get done in all old X-COM-Games, UFO ET-Series and other Fan-Projects of that Gerne. The difference is that the Fights are different (UFO 2 ET, will be then complete UFO-ET-Series on the Geoscape incl. Base- / Ship-Weapons), old X-COM in first 2 Games like the Xeonauts-Series and the other Fan-Projects a mix of both.

 

What Twigg mean are evtl. special internal Upgrades for the Fighters (existing like the X-25 or new to research ones like the Phantom+). Like for the Soldiers / Support Vehicles with their Vests / upgrade Modules (where the Vest-Slot is for Soldiers).

There I agree that this Part have a lot of Potential left. If the Dev-Team make an Refit there too (like in the other Parts which get done already), then the Airforce in Xenonauts 2 will be very interessting. The Beta-Tests with special Airforce-Testing-Parts in longe time back previous Versions showed it´s possible.

The best Refit would be that the Fighters can be upgraded (belongs on the Tier-Part it have).

Means: you have the X-25 Interceptor with the existing Modules [2x Hardpoint for Rockets / Torpedos or Guns; 1x Hardpoint for externernal Armor]. That wouldn´t be changed. But you can upgrade the X-25 with better Materials (make it lighter and more flexible, which give it more Range with that Refit and it get some HPs more). Similar to the Cevlar-Vest-Upgrade for the Soldiers.

Such an modular Upgrade for Fighters / Attack-Helicopters get integrated as an very Rare-Special-Item in the UFO-ET-Series. But Xenonauts 2 can do it better with R & D like with the Cevlar-Vest-Upgrade. The Material you need you have there (Alien Aloys). 

The other Refit belongs to the Pilots.

Means: Pilots can be transferd to an other interceptor (like an modern upgraded X-25-Interceptor or complete new Interceptor) without losing them completely.  The other Part of that is that the Pilots get Experiance in Airfights. If that get integrated it overflow all existing and new comming Games of that Gerne which are there. The only Prototype in that with Pilots were X-COM Interceptor.

The XP-Gaining can be done like in F1 Manager 2022 / UFO ET-Series or like it get done for Division-Commanders in the By Blood Alone-DLC.

 

What the Refuling & Rearming-Times belongs: That can be reduced too with better Equipment in the Hangars and if there the Engineer-Assignment is possible.

Means: You need more Personal-Costs, therefore the Rearming / Refulung / Modernising / Repairing goes faster. The Disadvantage is that you will have lesser Secondary-Bases (2 Maximum), but the Fighter-Upkeep is faster.

Edited November 16, 2022 by Alienkiller

[Twigg]

1 hour ago, Emily_F said:

That is a fair point, but with larger UFOs, esp with escorts, you get hammered even if your fighters are decent, armed with decent weapons and well armoured. 

You make a good point with the escorts but I have found that health on my fighters pretty irrelevant as they are just as effective at 1% as they are at 100 and it is rare with the refitting times that I will get a chance at another UFO in the same wave. Sometimes I do get that second chance and when I do I make sure the highest health fighter attacks from the front so the injured one is safe.

57 minutes ago, Chris said:

Yeah, but that sounds like an issue we can fix by tweaking the numbers on the other weapons so they become a more viable alternative to torpedoes.

Whereas fast rearm / refuel means that torpedoes would be the dominant weapons even if they were substantially weaker than other weapons, just because you can initiate multiple combats with them and repeatedly inflict damage without taking any in return. That's a fundamental issue that no amount of tweaking numbers can fix, it would require some change to the mechanics.

I think damage is only part of it as the range and therefore safety advantage of torpedoes is great and the thing they are weakest against (fighters) you don't want to shoot down anyway. Things like the gatling gun/laser cannon should offer a high risk high reward playstyle imo and right now all they offer is high risk.

[Alienkiller]

Twigg, that´s why Cannon-Fights called Dogfight (Men vs. Men and Machine vs. Machine). It´s like in 1st and 2nd WW with the Cannons. Why do you think the Germans have researched Air-to-Air-Rockets, intelligent Bombs, medium Range-Rockets to save their Airforce-Personal against the Airforce-Power the Allies brought later.