Lost air capability, let alone any sort of superiority - Help!

[Knox1776]

I think I'm two months in. I'm getting swarms of enemy fighters, and have no capability of defeating them.

I use Interceptors in packs of three. I fire the first missile at each fighter (1:1 ratio), and the second one a few seconds later to catch them after the barrel roll. More often than not, I still end up losing the battle.

Would Alenium missiles help in this respect? Can enemy fighters still dodge them?

I'm losing so many fighters that I am almost immediately rendered incapable of engaging them anymore. Sending out the Chinook is pure suicide at this point, even when I do manage to catch a scout.

HELP! Please?

[Max_Caine]

Yes, alienium missile do help a lot. Yes, fighters can dodge them, as they dodge any kind of missile. A good wheeze is to kit out your F-17s with a sidewinder and an alienium missile. You fire the sidewinder, the UFO dodges that, then you fire the alienium missile as per usual. It saves on wasting alienium missiles.

Other options. In Normal mode, one-on-one, a MiG can take on a fightercraft by itself, only armed with sidewinders (it will come out damaged). However in larger scraps fightercraft usually target one MiG with their missiles so you can (sometimes) loose one MiG before they can engage. The only option at that point is to fire missiles at the other two fightercraft then set your MiGs to fly to the edge of the game board and kick in the afterburners. They should be able to break free before the remaining UFO can turn and get a good fix on your fighters.

[Knox1776]

I don't hae Migs. Just the stock Interceptors.

Guess I should have focused on more on getting those, but I thought they were only useful for taking down bigger UFOs than I had seen so far. Interceptors seemed the logical choice for air superiority work. So instead, I built a couple additional radar bases in Europe and Africa to support my main base. This is probably where my funding problems came from.

[Max_Caine]

The "build order" that works for me (as of v14.1) goes along the lines of something like working towards 2 extra hangars in the first month, an extra base (with all the trimmings), extra living quarters and 20 more technicans (to crank out MiGs and alienium missiles in something like a reasonable time). I wouldn't be afraid to sell alien alloys if you need cash. It's very easy to recoup the sale of alloys in a single crash.

[StellarRat]

You probably figured this out already, but staggering your missile launches helps. Fire one sidewinder then after a couple seconds fire the second. They can't dodge the second because there is a time delay between dodges. At least you'll get one hit.

[Buzzles]

Personally, I only use the MIG against lone fighters (oh, and if you didn't know, you can set them to carry four sidewinders, very helpful) or Scouts.

I always take F17's against fighter wings, most of the time coming out on top even with just the normal Autocannon and Sidewinders. Once you upgrade to an Alenium Missile and Laser Cannons, your F17's have no trouble with fighters.

[Chris]

Also, we haven't really balanced the progression yet. It's a longstanding complaint that too many fighters spawn.

[Jonofwrath]

Had a lot of fun last night getting my head around air combat. Staggering missiles is essential and I like the tip of using a standard missile to trigger enemy evasion followed up with the advanced missile - nice!

Do think there might be a few too many ufos, but i won't complain - it's why they call it an invasion tbh!

I think for new users, some explanation of air combat would be good - for example clicking the missile/gun bays toggles them red/green, I think red deactivates or if red fires, but I'm not %100.

Liking it so far and looking forward to seeing how you polish it up over the coming month!

[Knox1776]

Green means the missile will fire as soon as it is in range with a lock. Red means it is on hold. You have to fire it by clicking on it. If you already know to stagger your missiles, then you have this down.

I will start a new game tonight, and see if I can manage to break through the UFO fighter packs. I think maybe I'm spending way too much money building more bases, money that I need to replace interceptors as they are getting shot down.

Does anyone have a good general concept on how to fight a 3v3 battle between fighters? Should I jump all three on one at a time, or go one to one?

I did not know that the Mig could carry sidewinders on all four hardpoints. This is good to know.

[Quartermaster]

MIGs are not as good at taking down the fighters as they used to be. Now that fighters launch a lower damage missile earlier, it can mess up the MIG. This is probably rare, but I had an air duel where the initial missile from the alien fighter disabled three of the MIGs missiles. Needless to say the MIG did not win that fight.

[sledge]

It's also important to dodge the enemy missiles in a standard 3vs3 dogfight. If you time it properly (if need be with excessive use of of the pause function: spacebar) you can even evade 2 or 3 staggered missiles fired at the same interceptor. And during the hand to hand phase don't forget to retarget the interceptors that have downed their target and use evasive action on an interceptor that takes lots of damage.

What I learned to be most important is to only engage if your reasonably sure that you will win without losses. So if you loose one interceptor sit tight for the next 72h or at least don't attack fighter squadrons 2vs3.

After all your supposed to save humanITY so having a few fighter squats strafe a mall or whatever is certainly preferable to loosing vital military assets ;p It's supposed to be an uphill battle with only a miracle able to save us.

He who tries to defend everything defends nothing

[StellarRat]

It would be nice if we could get more than three planes in a group. Four would be fine. Three is a really weird number. Three ship groups haven't been used for decades. It's always pairs.

[Voidfoam]

Comparing this to X-Com EU where the first month very well could go by without a single UFO in the skies(unless maybe you scouted very thoroughly.) it feels more like a instant full scale invasion than a slow growing threat as in X-com.

I have no complaints about the many single scouts appearing, that feels logical. But i think Alien hunter fighter wings should appear perhaps as escort only for bigger ships or when a solid human target could be verified by the aliens. Say if you send your fighters after a scout, or Chinook for a chrashite, then out of the blue the Aliens, if they detect you, send down a fighter squadron. Then you can respond to this. Hopefully destroying both the arriving fighters and the scout, or saving the chinook. Shortrange fighters and interceptors should be sent to intercept, not to appear all the time. Or maybe if the Aliens have an Air superiority mission then showing up in force over a certain area for a short period of time. This would make the fighting occur less often. I also think there should be the odd chance of larger UFO:s showing up alone or more often landed during abductions or other activities. As it is now i rarely get sightings of landed ships. I now this is far from balanced yet, but this is a view on how it could work.

As it stands now dogfights quickly become a shore and many of them feel pointless.

Perhaps you could field some sort of SAM sites (fixed or mobile) developed from later game tech. You would place them like bases and pay a quite hefty pay for them. And also maybe upkeep would be heavy. (Just so you couldnt field a shitload of these all over the globe) Then you would place them where you really felt they were strategically viable. And if UFOs are detected within their range you could simply have a new choice in the intercept window "Deploy laser/plasma AA battery." Of course all nice alien tech would be destroyed, but later on i guess you would wish you could just blow those smaller pesky ships out of the sky, since you got the stuff already. And of course a active Alien commander might locate your little artillery park or mobile ground force and return you the favor with his battleship, wasting you some 800.000 or so in cash. Another nice little game of chess

In short, a quick means of getting rid of the to many dogfights, without the need to ignore the enemy. After all its our Earth, we build a nice laser artillery park were we want to!

Edited September 6, 2012 by Voidfoam

[TornadoADV]

I always find it amazing how the smaller UFOs are able to operate over North America, Europe or the USSR without being utterly obliterated by ground based SAMs from said country's militarys. This IS 1979, hell the USSR should be a bastion against UFOs that casually fly into it's airspace.

[FranTorres]

I always find it amazing how the smaller UFOs are able to operate over North America, Europe or the USSR without being utterly obliterated by ground based SAMs from said country's militarys. This IS 1979, hell the USSR should be a bastion against UFOs that casually fly into it's airspace.

I must say I agree, I just happen to play Hearts of Iron 3 + BlackIce Mod and playing as germany if you focus in building flak stations after you get raped by the RAF by the time allied bombers reach any german province they want to bomb they have some damages due to the fact of flying over enemy territory and being shot at... I can't imagine what would be during the cold war era with lots of SAM sites.

[Voidfoam]

Well i guess if you had that kind of SAM site support and they were effective i guess you wouldn't have much of a game. I like to think that the Aliens have disabled them somehow, or that USSRs and US missiles simply are not effective against UFOS. Maybe they can jam them, missile tracking not working on UFO signatures. Or that they are simply too fast and agile if they detect missile launches from the ground.

My suggestion was something that i think would be easy to implement and would give the player(occasionally) and instant destruction option, if interception is not something he wants to bother with. And maybe you would build them with captured technology.

Even if the SAM sites of earth were effective, i guess that Alien bombers and bigger ships would make short work of them as soon as they were detected when they open fire. Maybe the guns stay silent in fear of the overwhelming retaliatory measures of the enemy. So then, if alien tech could provide some kind of jamming device, or maybe rapid redeployment from point of launch. Then you could motivate their entry into the war, and give them a chance of survival.

Edited September 9, 2012 by Voidfoam

[Buzzles]

If I recall correctly, the description of the Sidewinders in the Xenopedia does say that the Xenonauts have refitted the missiles with missiles that lock on to a specific type of radiation.

It would easily explain why SAM sites and the like aren't useful as they'd just be using "standard" missiles, and so would probably have a very low if not a zero hit rate with that in mind.

[Max_Caine]

SAM sites have been mentioned before many, many times, and the idea has been comprehensively shot down (excuse the pun). The essential argument is that if you have SAM sites, why do you need interceptors? Having read the threads, Chris has not been convinced by the arguments for.

In any case, the argument for SAM sites seems to be based on "there are too many fightercraft". Well! Mod the bloody thing then! You want to fiddle with the following files:

AM_AirSuperiority.xml controls UFOs that go after your interceptors/chinooks/transports (i.e. fightercraft)

AM_GroundAttack.xml controls UFOs that go after human targets (starts off as fightercraft)

AM_Research.xml controls UFOs that govern scouts. (start off as scouts, but upgrade to fightercraft)

Have a fiddle with the chances to appear and the ticker. See what hits the sweet spot for you.

[Voidfoam]

Because you might wanna destroy some ships right away, not down them, or fight them with interceptors. Many players might find it tedious, but still don't wanna loose the score. Anyways i weren't aware that this have been suggested before. Maybe it should have gone in the FAQ then if it was such a common request.

[kruxed]

all i would like is for your defence turrets to actually be able to fire on the geoscape when you have 3 alien heavy fighters just sitting ontop of your base. not talking about long range, just a very short circle from your base only

[Forceflow]

all i would like is for your defence turrets to actually be able to fire on the geoscape when you have 3 alien heavy fighters just sitting ontop of your base. not talking about long range, just a very short circle from your base only

If this comes with the added consequence of the Alien invasion force instantly knowing where your base is located (if the UFO gets away) instead of having to search for it.

Sounds like fun, if possible.

[kruxed]

i have no issues with such a thing. though i must say i am not clued up on how that actually works anyway

[Engineer]

If this comes with the added consequence of the Alien invasion force instantly knowing where your base is located (if the UFO gets away) instead of having to search for it.

Sounds like fun, if possible.

Yeah I disagree somewhat with the SAM thing.. unless it's some kind of NPC random event that happens if you protect a country long enough, and have to protect it from being destroyed, and when it's completed can be a little thorn in the side of the nasty aliens.

But, who says the aliens won't prioritize destroying that battery? So the player could be forced to make a choice to defend it, or consolidate forces and let it fall? I don't know.. little late in development to be bringing up this scenario.

But I like the turret fire idea. Perhaps make it optional. You see a UFO straying over the base, completely oblivious to the fact that behind some camouflaged steel blast doors are some ultra high tech AA defenses waiting for the order to launch... but launching reveals your position.

That's a neat trade-off.

And what about land based defenses? Setting turrets and fortifications inside the base?

If it was me, I'd have some nasty surprises waiting for the first poor extraterrestrial to set foot/claw/appendage in my base.

(still downloading, haven't played yet. No badge because i screwed it up =P)

[Wintermist]

Ouch, yes this happened to me too, while testing the game, I was even playing in Easy, it didn't take me long before I couldn't fly around anymore. Everything shot down immediately. I tried combinations of mig and vanilla. I just couldn't get back in the fight and had to give up the game altogether. v14.1

[stx]

I also think that the fighter spawning is unbalanced in the current version (14.11).

I have a primary base with 6 hangars, occupied by 3 F17 and 3 Migs. I'm more or less near the end of the sencond month.

Most of the time, when a scout is spawned, two groups or 3 fighters are also spawned.

I launch the 3 F17 to intercept the first group of 3 ufo fighters, and I usually destroy them without losing a fighter. Most of the times though, one or two F17 get slightly damaged, and are unable to be repaired/refueled/rearmed in time to intercept the sencond 3-ufo-fighter wing.

So now I have two choiches, both suboptimal:

1) I launch the Migs to shot down the scout, dodging the air combat of the sencond group of ufo fighters. This works ok. It usually ends with the second 3-ufo fighter wing patrolling an area very near to my base, as they tried to intercept my 3 F17 while they were returning to base after their combat.

So I basically cannot send the chinhook to the scout ground mission because it will be shot down by the ufo fighters. I try to use the F17 as escort, but usually only one is ready to intercept after rearming/repairing.

2) I launch the Migs to shoot down the second 3 ufo-fighter-wing. This normally ends with one mig shot down. The ufo fighters concentrate their fire on a single mig and shoot it down, because the mig cannot execute the evasive roll. When the surviving migs are back to base, they are not available to intercept the scout. The scout is too fast for the F17, so I am not able to shoot down the scout.

In the end getting to a ground combat is way too problematic in this version.

Too many figther spawns get just annoying. In my opinion they do not add value to the game experience and are just frustrating. The problem gets worse as time goes by, because higher tier ufo ships get also a direct fighter escort...

Then there is way the game manages the "retreat from air combat". I think that it also could be improved, and in the current build it does not work well, but I'll describe the problem in a different thread.