Milestone 2 Air Battles

[Vitruviansquid]

The problem, in short:

Air combat doesn't present interesting choices for a player in either its execution, when you are playing the interception out, or strategy, when you are thinking about where to locate your interceptors or how to arm them, and it doesn't feel good when you make those choices.

The problem, in long:

You can play the air combat fairly suboptimally by just equipping your interceptors, whether they're angels or phantoms, with two cannons each, and just fly at every existing alien craft and blow them up. You'll do some barrel rolling to dodge enemy shots, and you're going to take a few hits, but this strategy has worked enough for me to go all the way to day 200 against every craft that exists in this version  of the game.

You can do a bit better if you'd like to, by equipping your phantoms intelligently with shit like torpedoes (a phantom with two alienium torpedoes and a Gauss Blaster will do better against an abductor than one with just two Gauss Blasters, but I'm not sure laser lances have a role at all), but you don't have to, and it doesn't feel terribly like you've fucked up if you didn't, nor does it feel terribly triumphant if you did, because, after all, no matter what method you've chosen to use, unless you did something really obviously dumb like fail to bring enough weaponry to actually down the UFO or just not fill your hardpoint slots and weight slots, then things will be kinda alright.

And it doesn't feel terribly triumphant if you have the ideal build to defeat a UFO because none of the options you have are super different. They all exist for the same purpose of downing UFOs, it's just that some are better at it in a situation and some are worse. I feel like I solved (an incredibly simple) puzzle when I put together a build that works against a UFO, not that I chose a strategy and then implemented that strategy.

Solutions:

The biggest thing to be done about air combat is to sit and think about what strategies should be possible in the game, and then consider what options players should be presented with to enact those strategies. Using guns and using missiles are not strategies because they do not imply different mindsets - they do the same things in different ways. Instead, these are some changes that might give room for players to create strategies to pursue:

- Some air weapons are decent while others are excellent, but costly to fire. Recast torpedoes as powerful, premium weapons where you have to manufacture each torpedo at the cost of cash and, for the more advanced types, alienium. Also give these torpedoes a chance to just explode some some UFOs' power sources when they hit, making UFOs give less alienium as loot. The point of this change is simple, to create a difference between interceptor loadouts that you use to down ships for cash and resources, and interceptor loadouts that you use for defending your bases and funding regions. Of course, you would then increase the difficulty of UFOs to make it so that it is difficult to defend adequately with ships that merely down UFOs.

- It is very necessary to invest in gadgets for your interceptors that take up weight in order for interceptors to accomplish some of the normal stuff they have been accomplishing without prior. Imagine if fuel tanks gave you like a full 100% extension to your interceptor's range, but without it you really could barely leave the range of your base's first radar array. You would make a decision about how much fuel to take or how much weaponry, based on how many bases you have and how necessary you feel it is to send jets around the world to prevent rising panic or let bases defend each other. Other gadgets that you might be able to kit out an interceptor with might be stuff like sensors to allow the interceptor to scan around it and see UFOs outside without the help of bases' radar arrays, or go faster on the world map.

- Make a lot of different levers for the options to kit out your interceptors so making your interceptors powerful in different ways have different strategic costs. Let's say we nix the system with weight, hardpoints, and equipment slots, and just say that interceptors have a missile, a cannon, and an armor. Then, maybe it costs an out-of-the-way research to improve your cannons, it costs way more money upgrade your missiles, and it costs way more materials to upgrade your armor. You balance UFO encounters so it will be generally okay if you have two of the three ship "parts" upgraded and updated, but you might have a bad time if only one of them is, and then you leave it up to the players which ship part they dump resources into upgrading.

[Chris]

Just saw this flash by - can you just let us know what difficulty you’re playing on?

[Vitruviansquid]

I am on Commander

[Komandos]

2 hours ago, Vitruviansquid said:

Imagine if fuel tanks gave you like a full 100% extension to your interceptor's range, but without it you really could barely leave the range of your base's first radar array. You would make a decision about how much fuel to take or how much weaponry, based on how many bases you have and how necessary you feel it is to send jets around the world to prevent rising panic or let bases defend each other.

I like the idea of adding the ability to hang additional fuel tanks or reconnaissance equipment on the plane instead of weapons.

[Komandos]

2 hours ago, Vitruviansquid said:

Air combat doesn't present interesting choices for a player in either its execution, when you are playing the interception out, or strategy, when you are thinking about where to locate your interceptors or how to arm them, and it doesn't feel good when you make those choices.

In aerial combat, players do not have the opportunity to gain an advantage over the enemy in any other way except to upgrade weapons and aircraft. There are no pilot skills. There are no weather conditions. No wind, no sun, no altitude. There is nothing that gives airplanes a situational bonus.

[Grobobobo]

12 hours ago, Vitruviansquid said:

Using guns and using missiles are not strategies because they do not imply different mindsets - they do the same things in different ways. Instead, these are some changes that might give room for players to create strategies to pursue:

I 100% agree with the rest of the post, but i do think there is potential for more tactical depth, not just strategic.

[Komandos]

Battles in the sky can be done on the same principle as battles in the game "Mortal Kombat". Each aircraft has its own set of techniques (which depends on the design of the aircraft and the skill of the pilots). The outcome of the battle depends on how the player correctly assesses the situation (the distance to the enemy, the reaction time and time the execution of the "tactical technique".

[Avaren]

I am reminded of a flash (or perhaps flash-like?) game I played in my youth where 2 players used 3 fighter jets to try and destroy the other side.
It was a turn-based game where you selected where each plane would move (all planes had a collection of endpoints they could finish their turn at depending on their current facing and speed), had moving clouds that would block sight from both players on what was in them.

Unfortunately for the life of me I cannot find either a video of it on YouTube, the website it was hosted on (it was from a country's military website), nor any emails I would have received for having signed up to the site (As I lost access to my email from my school days.)

[Vitruviansquid]

16 hours ago, Grobobobo said:

I 100% agree with the rest of the post, but i do think there is potential for more tactical depth, not just strategic.

Increased tactical depth is fine, but I feel that the game is already mostly about ground combat and doesn't need to also have a super-involved air combat. Strategic depth, which is where the air combat links to the other parts of the game, is what I think the system is sorely lacking

but if a rework also improved the tactical depth of the air combat, I don't think anybody would complain.

[Pietje666]

If you put X-COM 4 not in the equation, Xenonauts 2 gives you more control of the air battles. To me air battles are, bringing the best ship, with the best equipment and pray you down it.

[FloydTT]

I find the Aerial battles quite fun. Need to use the spacebar a lot especially when I have a squadron in the air and need to give commands to multiple interceptors almost simultaneously. One major bug that I must report is that sometimes the target alien craft flies off the screen and I cannot re-center the battle on the screen. Both alien craft and interceptor are off screen. This is something that I hope can be fixed. I enjoyed the pre release tremendously and look forward to game completion.

[gG-Unknown]

I see usage of pause at will as major problem.

 

Arial combat should be a minigame. Therefore completely diferent to rest of the game.

This is chance to develop a game inside a game. I think this : Whole game is turn based, or globe map has pause at will. It means - Major dierencee of a minigame to contrast to rest of prodct  >>> aerial fight should be build as fast paced logic brain teasear WITHOUT pause. Player could have option to slow down, but player can not stop the minigame when it is started. So minigame should have just TWO speeds, normal AND slow. No pause. Therfore speed controll is just one button/ keyboard key or on screen element. >> again simple controls allow player beter forcus for fast action/reaction. Best would be make slow button a form o bullet  time. 5 seconds active while 10 seconds to charge up. This way, even slow down button becomes part of the minigame control set.

Then higher difficulty levels of game  are made by growing  the minimal speed allowed of minigame.

 

Tetris, Mortal combat, ... are good examples of how to approach. 6 keys on keyboard to controll at maximum   OR mouse (left,righ mouse button + wheel UP,DOWN. and two side buttons)

There is serious reason why six buttons at max for whole controll set of miniigame - Console ediiton ! Console contnroler ! Thing ahead !

Simple to control, but fast without pause, that is how refreshing minigame would look like.

Edited January 8 by gG-Unknown

[skaianDestiny]

1 hour ago, gG-Unknown said:

There is serious reason why six buttons at max for whole controll set of miniigame - Console ediiton ! Console contnroler ! Thing ahead !

FUCK no. Console is not the fucking home for an X-Com-style tactics game at the complexity Xenonauts is trying to have. There's a reason why console ports have always been second-class citizens for any XCOM game. Lobotomizing the complexity of even the aerial combat minigame just to shoehorn in console support is shooting yourself in the foot for nothing.

Edited January 8 by skaianDestiny

[Komandos]

22 hours ago, gG-Unknown said:

Major dierencee of a minigame to contrast to rest of prodct  >>> aerial fight should be build as fast paced logic brain teasear WITHOUT pause.

Player could have option to slow down, but player can not stop the minigame when it is started. So minigame should have just TWO speeds, normal AND slow. No pause. Therfore speed controll is just one button/ keyboard key or on screen element. >> again simple controls allow player beter forcus for fast action/reaction. Best would be make slow button a form o bullet time. 5 seconds active while 10 seconds to charge up. This way, even slow down button becomes part of the minigame control set.

 

Then higher difficulty levels of game are made by growing the minimal speed allowed of minigame.

If the game is based on logic, then the player should have time and opportunity (pause) to think about it.

If reflexes and reaction speed are required from the player, then the game cannot be called logical.

[GIraaa]

I think everyone is overestimating the skills of the development team, I've made a number of great suggestions earlier in the development phase, including air combat, none of which were taken into consideration saying that they lack the development power.