air combat ideas

[eversor]

The same system used for ground combat, but aircraft and ufos instead of ground units with a static grid for movement over moving ground loop visuals or clouds for high altitude.

turn based combat focused on closing with target ,  alien ships main objective is to reach objective on geoscape  they  can turn and fire on you  but  are still heading towards their goal, escorts dogfight. main ships stay near top edge of the map while your fighters chase them getting closer each round.  your evasive rolls  and turning cost you distance to target.

pilot skills and abilities on both sides. ( resistance to black outs, dodge chance, hit chance

decoy systems on both sides for weapon evasion. 

random damage effects on both sides like damaged weapon systems, targeting, engines, pilot/ crew death

stuns ecm type effects, blinding lights from ufos, short ranged teleporting evasions from ufo fighters and light ships

ability to deploy up to 10 fighters vs more ufo escorts with large ships. 

for air battles make altitude and angles of attack vs armor on facings of ships a factor. 

 

[Twigg]

I may be in the minority here but I like the real time nature of the air combat and that it is quick and deadly. It is a great palate cleanser from the slower and more methodical ground missions and requires you to use a different skillset. The air combat itself needs more work (there was previously talk about weather affecting air combat which I think could be a lot of fun) and I would love more flexibility in air loadouts so it doesn't feel like I am just equipping the most powerful thing I've built and going from there (which is an issue with the ground combat as well) but the general premise is something I really enjoy.

[Alienkiller]

Eversor, the Time-Unit-Airfight in different Versions get tested from beginning on and was completly rejected from the Community and us Beta-Testers. Similar to the new Base-System, where the Beta-Testers and Developers haven´t found an 100% working Alternative for the Systems for both. Furthermore the Communty outvoted the new Base-System to an older correctly working one.

The other Suggestions about the Refit / Rework for the Airforce, Airbattles and what belongs to that:

- Pilot Skills: Yeah, that get already discussed in the Betas and we Beta-Testers as well as the Community wanna have that Feature, so the Devs have to bring that in

- Decoy Systems: Sounds interessting. We had some Decoys like Outposts in earlyer Beta-Versions, which get attacked very often from the Aliens; evtl. such Outposts come back and more of such Decoys come in (Civilian Planes, Military Planes etc.) as well as more Aircraft Gear for your Airforce will come back

- Ramdom Damage Effects: Yeah, that get already discussed in the Betas and from the Community; we will see what can be done from the Devs in that Part

- other Effects you mention: for normal Forces and Civilians it´s integrated on the World Map, for Airfights that´s not doable in such Games (all Developers of that Gerne have Problems with that, otherwise UFO 1 ET Gold / UNI-Mod, UFO 2 ET: Battle for Mercury and the upcomming Refit UFO 1 ET: Platinum as well well as Phoenix Point and Xenonauts 2 or Stellaris with the latest Upgrades / Star Trek Mod would have it already integrated); short said: it´s impossible to integrate, only as Events or similar!

- Up to 10 Fighters: as single Squadron impossible, but you can evtl. make 3 Squadrons (help from the Country you fight), where you control yours and the AI the enemy and 2 Country Squadrons. 3 Squads are possible, we tested that out with the Outpost-Variant, where 1 Country Squad help your Fighter-Squad to fight the Aliens. That Idea get discussed and evtl. will come in again in an more upgraded Variant.

- last Effects you Mention: Yeah, that Idea we have too and the Devs wanna bring more in (Clouds, High-Effects and similar) in an Refit from the existing Airfight. What is doable we will see when they present it.

Short said: Not all Ideas are doable like we Beta-Testers, Early Access-Testers, later Standard-Gamers and the Devs whish and have in mind.

 

[Emily_F]

I definitely like the decoys idea (though they should be a tech tree thing that you have to research for different kinds of enemy weapon).  It would also be good to have cloaking tech once you have the stealth armour. Similarly, it would be good to be able to research things equivalent to the modules for soldiers (like advanced targeting, better radar allowing multiple target engagement at once, cybernetic integration that improves certain stats, maybe drones that have extra cannons or something).

Pilot experience should absolutely be a thing - and I would love to see a "rescue mission" to recover the pilot (which could be a timed mission to get to them with a medikit within a certain number of turns, defended by cleaners who are looking for them to kill/abduct them).  Would that be a possibility @Chris? 

I think pilots should be assignable and hireable, like the soldiers are.  So you could assign good pilots to your best fighters for the best chances of winning battles.  Experienced pilots would get perks like more evasive manoeuvres (or quicker recovery from the last one), able to go faster, as well as maybe a general "less chance to be hit" and higher "chance to land a hit" perk to stats. 

Finally, I think that it would be good to have multiple levels, with the lower levels having terrain that you could "hide" behind.  That is probably a bit too hard to do, but it would make the air combat a bit more interesting - I find it a bit of a bore at the moment so almost always go with autoresolve.  

[Chris]

I’ll take a look at this in a few days, I’m too busy with bug fixes right now.

Just so it’s said - we’re not planning to make fundamental changes to the Air Combat mechanics at this stage but we are open to ideas about equipment and even things like pilots etc, or changes to specific mechanics in the air combat.

[alsuave]

Recruiting pilots would be awesome!

If they can gain experience and improve that would be double awesome!

Pilots should get tired and/or injured so that you can't send the same ones out on every single mission.

[Cik]

I'd like to see altitude / energy management with countermeasures and deeper missile play. doesn't need to be flight sim level but it'd be cool if the upgraded planes gave you more than more HP + more DPS. Also, we could use sidegrades to the different planes, with missile carriers vs. gunfighters (or mixture of both), plus a loadout system that gives the aircraft greater range and speed in exchange for a lighter loadout (less missiles / guns / countermeasures)

 

If I remember X1 had some aircraft sidegrades, F16/Mig-25, I think that would be relatively easy and desirable to put back in. If anybody cares about my ideas I could sketch it out more thoroughly but that's what I want most of all.

Oh, and I'd like the ability to escort transports, if that doesn't already exist (maybe it does..)

Edited July 20, 2023 by Cik
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[Mr.Xia]

I think the limitations of what you could do in X1 and X2 were what pulled the potential of air combat, apart from its rad music. evasive rolls and afterburners are nice to have but there should be more utility that interceptors could do.

Decoy systems sounds great(I'm assuming deploying it on air combat). If the Angel has a fourth 'utility' slot to allow for extra options in air combat that would make for some flexibility.

teleports sounds fun for late gate combat, as to both evade and catch up within range of enemy UFOs, and a superior option than evasion, likely at the cost of burning more fuel.

Keeping the 3-fighter system would make more sense for a quick and deadly battle. Issue with air combat for me is the lack of options to do back in X1(I think X2 had less frustration for me on that area) but I would rather have more utility options than extra aircraft(that would also factor in the geoscape balancing with funding and enemy UFO numbers). Keeping it short and simple is good contrast to the long drawn out tactical battles on land.

 

On new ideas I think having some enemy drones coming out of larger ufos would give more variation than beelining to single enemy target, low hp distractions rather than simple projectiles to dodge that the interceptors have to destroy. A 'turret' for the interceptor to apply extra short range firepower or destroying enemy drones could also come in play as a 'utility' slot.

Or if the armour sides of a UFO/interceptor comes into play, then we could have remote controlled missiles that can be shot first, and swung around to impact the back of the UFO. Considering it's usefulness, it can be considered an 'aircraft' that the UFOs can shoot down within their firing sights too.