Pre-UFO Research Options Thoughts

[Sathra]

So we've got:

- Better UFO Tracking tech.

- Cruise Missile tech.

- Shock batons tech.

Having a think about it, 'Interception Doctrine' does sound good. Half the early problems with lack of tech is not being able to catch UFO's to shoot them down. Some early research to reduce fuel consumption would help with that.

Either reducing fuel cost for flying around the the Geoscape, or making it easier to catch the UFO's without chasing them around so much (speed boost when near the target?).

[Chris]

Half the early problems with lack of tech is not being able to catch UFO's to shoot them down. Some early research to reduce fuel consumption would help with that.

Migs?

[Jean-Luc]

Anyone who's seen Top Gun knows that Migs aren't all they're cracked up to be.

[Straker]

The Israelis would agree.

The old MiGs were more durable until missiles advanced to the point to make the point moot. In the game, researching improvements to earthly tech could heat up the cold war and undermine Xenonaut unity. Researching alien tech would be bad enough.

[anotherdevil]

Migs are no good for shooting down the little buggers Chris, you know this, you set it up that way! =p

[Sathra]

Yeah, the MiG's are pretty bad at shooting down agile UFO's. They can't dodge, and just one bad damage roll is an instant kill. They still have problems catching stuff anyways currently (its the long 'close chase' sections that burn most of the fuel).

[Chris]

Hmmm. The sidewinders should be able to shoot down Scouts really. If not I need to do some more balancing. Lone Migs with sidewinders are meant to be the counter for lone scouts, but poor against fighters.

[anotherdevil]

What's the differenc between scouts and fighters? Have we got fighters in the current build? And I think the problem is you always have to time it right or the smaller UFOs roll out of the way of your missiles

[Sathra]

You can shoot down Scouts with Sidewinders, but its a mixture of timing and luck. It takes 2 missiles or so, and you don't have much leeway. Could always do what was suggested before, having 'Heavy' missile slots gets extra ammo when equipped with Light-class missiles (2 instead of 1 per slot should do it, much more leeway and you can spam missiles at the Scout).

Fighters have missiles and I think a rapid-fire cannon (or should have, haven't fought any in V8) and without being able to dodge they can do alot of damage.

[Jean-Luc]

It basically takes two missiles to take out a scout/fighter. One to expend the evasive roll and another one to hit it with. Sathra's 2-for-1 idea seems nice but balance-wise two light missiles should always do less damage to large targets than one heavy otherwise there'd be no point to heavies. Just something to keep in mind.

Edited December 19, 2011 by Jean-Luc

[anotherdevil]

Well just make the light missiles do say 50 points of damage each, and the heavy do 150. So it is clearly better than having 2 lights, but not if you're facing fast aircraft. I know what you mean though

[Sathra]

Also depends on how damage effects are modeled. Since its done 'per-hit' drowning a target, especially one better killed with Heavy missiles, with Light missiles could have a better chance to blow up the UFO outright.

Basically they have a better chance of slipping through a gap and setting off the reactor. But having the per-slot damage total being less for Light's makes sense too (and is more reliable).

[Chris]

Fighters should be able to roll too. They're meant to be the most dangerous of all the early game UFOs because they're designed specifically for dogfighting and escort work.

I think I might have to see if we can get the air combat to compile seperately so we can do some fairly extensive air combat testing in the beta.

[Phishfood]

Going back to the idea of researching UFOs and having it do something concrete in game rather than being a "texture" or "junk" research, how about hiding the alien's firing arc and such until it is researched? If you engage a UFO before you research it, the UFO just appears on the radar as a blip, no firing arc, no indication of HP or even class.

Then you research this one project, you get a class of UFO, get a firing arc and maybe a rough damage indicator.

Later in the game, as you capture each UFO/weapon and get a proper look the firing arc becomes accurate and perhaps graduated - 100% accuracy here, 50% accuracy here. The hp bar gets 20 notches instead of 4.

Down side to that is that the person who has played before knows some of the accurate data and then you have the whole metagaming problem, but that strongly existed in X-com and pretty much every other game ever anyway.

[Chris]

The damage thing could work though - until you research the UFO it could just have Unknown HP but after researching it you have specifics? The firing arc thing is possible but I think it might make the game a bit difficult. Opinions?

[Sathra]

I thought that was going to be in already actually.

Not to the degree that Phishfood mentioned, but more that until you researched a UFO there would be no fire-arc indicator or 'damage taken' percentage (it'd just be some word like slightly, damaged, severe, etc).

You'd still see the ship icon in combat though.

[GrumpySage]

I actually have a small 'guide' for Air Combat that I've been meaning to post. It is from V8.2 I believe, but it should be the same for the current build. It uses the firing arcs quite heavily and I actually managed to (barely) down a Corvette with 2 F-17's, without losing either.

Edit: Posted here http://www.goldhawkinteractive.com/forums/showthread.php?496-Aircraft-combat-tactic-%282-F-17s-vs-Scout%29

Edited December 19, 2011 by GrumpySage
Added link

[anotherdevil]

I don't think researching the ufo is necessary. Surely surviving air combat and just looking at the UFO tells you where the guns are pointed... but the damage thing could be good.

[Sathra]

Its more officially knowing where all the guns are and the limits of their firing arcs.

[anotherdevil]

too true, just saying, doesn't take days of research to know that the guns only rotate so far, and are in these directions, etc.

[Sathra]

Much easier when you're not being shot by them though. Its just to simplify it coding-wise.

[anotherdevil]

yeah. I was just suggesting, you shoot one down, you do a ground mission, and you have the arcs, but ideas of speed, weapon power, mission type etc. needs research

[Sathra]

Hmm, that could work. Chris?

[RotGtIE]

I agree with Sathra. It'd probably be a lot easier to handle UFO knowledge through standard research like everything else. I also like the idea of two levels of detail a player can learn about a ship. I think it'd be reasonable to have to have scientists research a captured UFO hull similar to any other project ("captured scout hull") for basic information like firing arcs or the ability to identify ships specifically in combat, and then to have further details like measuring UFO damage in combat and the ability to predict where the UFO is going to go in a turn of air combat extracted from captured alien engineers.

Since these engagements are starting at or beyond missile range, it's reasonable to conclude that they would be BVR engagements from the start and so it would be understandable that the UFOs could initially only be identified as blips of various sizes until research on downed ships made it possible for the radars on your interceptors to be able to accurately identify targets before getting into visual range.

[Jean-Luc]

No arcs at start wouldn't be too problematic if the initial UFOs were simply a reconnaissance wave consisting mostly of just scouts/fighters. The research would finish fairly quickly anyway. New players (non beta testers/x-com veterans) might still find it confusing though.