Advanced Interception Strategies?

[Knox1776]

I'm doing great shooting down alien UFOs now thanks to all the help in my previous thread.

Now I'm trying to fine-tune my strategies. I'm over-killing the targets. This is what I'm using on each kill:

Fighters - no crash, so irrelevant

Small Scout - two sidewinders

Medium Scout - four sidewinders

Corvette - two sidewinders, two avalanche (1 Mig's payload)

Landing Craft - two sidewinders, two avalanche (1 Mig's payload)

These attack strategies get the UFO knocked down, but it's damn hard on the wreck. I get a lot of dead and wounded aliens, and very little loot to recover. I've thought about using guns, but it's harder to catch the smaller ships, and the big ones I'm afraid will kill fighters. I don't have enough fighters to keep them in the repair bay, either.

I'm clearly over-damaging the UFOs, but I'm in need of a better way to attack them to minimize damage to both my interceptors and my target so I can get undamaged power cores sooner.

Thanks!

[Akrakorn]

On a previous release, I often used a fighter to lure the enemy UFOs while the other two attacked from behind at a really slow speed. That way you do a lot of damage without overkilling the UFO. Not sure if that still works with v14.1.

[sledge]

1. Is it certain that damage during air combat effects status of downed UFOs. They tend to take some damage crashing into the ground as a thought.

2. Is the amount of punishment needed to down one level across different difficulties? To me it seems they take a lot more to down the only game I had far enough to take on corvettes bombers landing crafts and cruisers was on veteran. And at least for corvette I am quite sure it took more than that. Than again the value for Medium Scouts seems right.

So is air combat effected in any way by difficulty?

3. If you want in undamaged don't shoot it down Corvettes at least tent to "hop" from landing site to landing site it's quite easy to raid them while they're down.

Although the question remains if the escorts will attack your chinhook while it's trying to land nearby in the final version (right now they don't).

Edited September 12, 2012 by sledge
structure

[Knox1776]

I tried tailing scouts to catch one at a landing spot, but they have so far either outlasted my interceptor fuel supply, or taken off before my groundpounders can get there. One time they actually took off right as the chinook got within range - that did not end well, very few survivors from the crash.

[Buzzles]

Personally, I prefer using one Sidewinder and finishing off with a Cannon for the Small Scouts.

You can however, abuse the AI at this point in the development progress. If you send two aircraft, the AI will always attack the first one (note, the first one shown in aircombat is the first one you clicked on in the intercept window), so you can just have the first one turn 90 from the alien aircraft and have number 2 drop into it's six, fires a missile and chases it down with the cannon.

I expect that to change soon.

Medium Scouts since the last couple of builds pretty much have to be dealt with using MIG's+Sidewinders as otherwise you can no longer catch them on the Geoscape, a shame as the previous 2x F17 method was great for making sure I had a steady supply of powercores.

[StellarRat]

I wonder how the AI for sending ships works in the first place? I seems to me that you should be able to maintain periods of air superiority if you shoot down all the incoming alien ships and they haven't got anymore ready to enter the atmosphere. I don't know about you guys, but I have no problem shooting down UFOs even over the ocean. I figure if it's not flying it's not causing trouble. In the old XCom Apocalypse it was possible to shoot down so many UFOs that they would stop sending them. At that point you're only choice was to attack the home base. I kind of like that idea.

[TornadoADV]

I wonder how the AI for sending ships works in the first place? I seems to me that you should be able to maintain periods of air superiority if you shoot down all the incoming alien ships and they haven't got anymore ready to enter the atmosphere. I don't know about you guys, but I have no problem shooting down UFOs even over the ocean. I figure if it's not flying it's not causing trouble. In the old XCom Apocalypse it was possible to shoot down so many UFOs that they would stop sending them. At that point you're only choice was to attack the home base. I kind of like that idea.

It is kinda annoying how they seemingly have an endless amount of Fighters, Heavy Fighters and Bombers, which can either kill/damage your interceptors or kill innocent civilians but don't leave any wreckage or material behind for you to use.

[FranTorres]

Of course it's annoying, it escalates so fast that you can't barely afford a second base. Right now I have a base in the SovUnion and is filled with laser defenses and hangars, but the game is just an alpha, not even a beta yet.

Only thing you can do is relay on air superiority to down those motherfu**ers, lots of planes and good strategies to lure them and evade their attacks.

[StellarRat]

Of course it's annoying, it escalates so fast that you can't barely afford a second base. Right now I have a base in the SovUnion and is filled with laser defenses and hangars, but the game is just an alpha, not even a beta yet.

Only thing you can do is relay on air superiority to down those motherfu**ers, lots of planes and good strategies to lure them and evade their attacks.

Hopefully during the "Balancing Phase" these issues will be addressed. One way I can think of right now is to give the jets realistic missile loadouts. In 70's most planes would/could carry 8 or more missiles while flying air superiority missions. Even the "little" F-16 carries four AMRAAMs (in those days it would have been Sparrows) and 2 Sidewinders when flying CAP. Also, being able assign your missiles to specific targets would very helpful. Edited September 13, 2012 by StellarRat