Why the alien ships sizes and speeds are not diffirentiated.

[vitcons]

Guys, hi i'm new here. Playing in game and see one thing.

After certain point all 100% UFOs coming are SMALL and speed is 2300. I think I got already 30+ such UFOs one by one.

I think more logical that UFOs can be different (it was a case in the original UFO).

I understand that to capture the UFO with speed 2300 I need to have a new fighter like MIG, but why 100% becoming like this. Why old slow UFO never appear. Why speed is always constant.

Also I've never seen that UFO is landed to the ground. Why is that

[thothkins]

I'm sure someone can confirm, but there's a point where, because it all has to be balanced yet, that there are lots and lots of fighters all over the place. At the same time, you have moved on from Light Scouts so you don;t get the same number of those craft to intercept.

[Max_Caine]

To put it simply.

The game has a master "clock" which counts higher and never counts lower. As the "clock" or "ticker" gets higher, older style of UFOs are replaced with newer styles of UFOs. This is to represent a gradual escalation in the invasion of the planet. So the light scout (slower - 1500) is replaced with the scout (faster - 2300) and joined by fighters (faster than light scout, but not as fast as the scout - 1800). Each type of UFO has a maximum speed, and all UFOs travel at maximum speed so you can always tell what kind of UFO it is by the speed. If you see 2300 and small, you know straight away it will be a Scout. You never get to intercept older styles of UFOs when they are replaced - the aliens always use the best UFOs they have access to.

The scout (2300 speed) was deliberatly intended to be a ship that has no landing capability, and as a "foil" for the MiG. It is the aliens response to their scouts being shot down, ("let's see them try and shoot down this!"), and the MiG is the human response to the aliens trying not to be shot down ("Got you now!").

[Gauddlike]

I would like to see the enemy ships moving at different speeds rather than flat out all of the time.

A research mission for example might have the ship flying slowly around an area.

They may detect your ship approaching and go up to full speed to try and escape or they may not notice you and allow your slower interceptors a chance to get the jump on ships they would not otherwise be able to catch.

You would still be more likely to catch the enemy with the Migs higher speed but slower interceptors would still have a chance.

Thinking along this further you could maybe give craft a stealth rating to modify the enemy chance of detecting you on approach.

A slower ship with higher stealth rating would be an alternative to going for the fastest interceptor.

Safer on the geoscape (harder for air superiority missions to pick them out) but slower in air combat so potentially more vulnerable.

[zzz1010]

If you don't want to know how things behind the scene work - don't read this thread

Currently it's not work.

At first we got landings and crashed - sweet early scouts. Then we got no landnding (scouts). After fighters arrival we got no landing and rare crashes. And when different fighters replace scouts in research mission - we got no landings no crashes, there still some rare missions with corvettes and landingship involved but most time like this.(There also bases and terrors but i'm about common activity) And this is relatively long period discribed there 3-4 month( depending on how successful you are). I'm about currently.

And I can live with this escalation concept but i don't like this permanent hard switches at all. If you want make it this way may be make it like sort of weighted chance - some points when we got rare new, some common and sometimes old. with ticker increase new become more common, previously common become old and more rare, but old never removed from game complitly - oldest just become more an more rare. It's not perfect but something like this will be better, I think.

it would appear that fighters, bombers, etc. that don't appear as crashed at the moment will appear as crashed eventually

I'm about currently(I mean - I am talk about present time, not sure is I used right words. Anticipating all this "for beta""will changed""placeholders" "temporal" and such ). And this bombers intended to be(if Chris not change his mind and bomber crashes will be there at all) not enterable small things with small crew - it's less intresting then even first scout.

Edited November 24, 2012 by zzz1010

[Max_Caine]

From the first UFOs and being horrible thread, it would appear that fighters, bombers, etc. that don't appear as crashed at the moment will appear as crashed eventually (although from reading the thread it would seem that only the "main" UFO will appear, i.e. with a squadron of fighters, you only get one fighter on the crash site).

[Gauddlike]

I think once the numbers are tweaked in beta it should be less of a problem.

For example if light scouts stop appearing at 500 but scouts appear at 450 then you will have an overlap where there will be a chance of either, or both, craft types appearing.

Same for the fighters, you may find a mix of fighters and heavy fighters then later a mix of heavy fighters and interceptors rather than an instant switch from one type to another.

If nothing else this should make the balance between craft easier as you don't have a solid wall in the difficulty curve when suddenly all craft are replaced by the harder version at the same time.

[zzz1010]

For example if light scouts stop appearing at 500 but scouts appear at 450 then you will have an overlap where there will be a chance of either, or both, craft types appearing.

Every mission has hard switch for what craft is will be used for that. If you replace research craft there can't be used previous one. Well we can begin ground attacks earlear and use lightscout there at first instead of fighter and this way we got scout(for research) and rare lightscout simultaneously. maybe something like this. But it still completely disapear when fighter arrives and you never got rare earler cruiser - if you got cruiser - this mission will be always cruiser until it will be replaced by something else.

Edited November 24, 2012 by zzz1010

[Max_Caine]

zzz's right. The ticker "switch" doesn't have a range, just a single value for each UFO type. It would seem that when a wave is generated, the ticker is checked, missions are decided on and the mission xml files provide information on which UFO at the time the ticker is checked should appear. Hence the hard switch.

[Gauddlike]

I know that is how it currently works on each individual mission type.

However I was referring to the wave as a whole rather than just the craft that would be generated for a specific mission.

For example when the wave is generated you may have a scout mission and a research mission appear.

These two missions may not have the same craft at the same ticker level.

It would therefore be possible that scout missions would be performed by a light scout while research missions would be performed by a scout ship.

That balancing process would allow for the kind of mixed ship types I mentioned and not necessarily have light scouts vanish from the game entirely from every mission type at exactly the same moment.

I would like to see each mission have the main and escort craft have a ticker range that can overlap, but that may not be needed.

It will be easier to tell once the game is more complete.

I haven't tried adding more mission types to see if it is possible to do it that way though, been waiting for beta.

I would add at least one more variant of each current mission type with altered ship types, just to add more variation to the enemies you will encounter.

AM_Research would have scouts begin to appear at 150 while AM_Research2 would have light scouts remain until 300 with escorts added in at higher tickers and so on.

Edited November 24, 2012 by Gauddlike