Tweaks and adjustments to air combat

[Max_Caine]

It's good to see that evade has been added to the light scout. However, evade needs beefing up. At the moment, UFOs which can make the evade maneouvre don't move either far or fast enough to evade missiles. I would suggest both increasing the evasion speed and the evasion distance. They don't have to be very much, just enough so it's adequate to evade a missile.

I'd also suggest improving the turn speed of a light scout. Because of its long body, the light scout cannot complete a turn to face an interceptor before a pair of sidewinders add a custom window to the cockpit, so it evades and the sidewinders crash into the long body. By increasing the turn speed, the light scout can turn to face an interceptor and actually evade a missile.

I find it interesting that the corvette has a point defence turret but you can't see the weapon arc, the weapon range, nor can the turret engage missiles. As it is, all a MiG verses a corvette has to do is launch missiles then flee. Perhaps it would be better if the point defence turret had a visible arc, could target missiles, but fix its firing arc to, say, 180, so if you want to bring the thing down, you have to get behind it.

[Waladil]

What I think the actual problem with AI combat rolls is is that human missiles have an overly-large detonation radius.

If your planes combat roll, the enemy missile can pass within a few pixels and miss -- which makes sense.

If the enemies combat roll, your missile can detonate over half a scout/fighter's width away and still do full damage -- lolwut?

Also, my experience is that the later ships don't have point defense turrets per se -- they've got AMMs, anti-missile missiles. And they always have two of them, so assume that the first two missiles will be destroyed but all others will hit.

[erutan]

Yeah, I have my condor launch it's lightweight missiles to use up the AMMs, then have my foxtrot launch it's heavier ones after.

[Sathra]

Dropping missile speed to torpedo levels does allow UFO's to dodge missiles, but its not a great fix lol.

[Lightzy]

I don't get it, maybe i suck at air combat but there's no way for a condor to defeat a heavy fighter, even it has alenium missiles. it takes like 3-4 to down the fighter..

So it's essentially impossible for me to intercept any craft that has 2 heavy fighter escorts.

Also, how would you defeat the light scout if it can evade missiles and you only have 2 missiles on the condor and need both to crash it? If enemies could effectively dodge missiles it's basically game over for me

Hell, it's game over for me anyway around month 3-4 because there's no way to down those damned landships with their two heavy fighter escorts and from then on the map just fills up with large ships which don't go down even to 8 alenium torps and a whole blitz of heavy fighter squads (which I cannot at all intercept)

how do u win air combat like this?

[Waladil]

The Condor isn't supposed to beat Heavy fighters -- Corsairs are.

Also to defeat dodging enemies you can use various tactics. For example, lets say the light scout actually becomes able to dodge missiles properly. Then all you need to do is send two Condors (and you start with two, remember), launch one missile and wait for it to dodge. As soon as it dodges, launch the other three.

Also also you ought to remember that cannon upgrades are quite powerful -- the later plasma blaster and MAGStorm weapons actually outrange fighter/heavy fighter/interceptor weapons and do massive damage, which makes those dogfights much easier.

[Max_Caine]

Okay, in order...

Landing ships and later craft do have anti missile-missiles, however some do also have a secondary weapon that passes for a point defence turret. Case in point, the corvette has two weapons, the point-defence turret being AV.CORVETTEBEAM2, which does a quarter of the "main beam" damage, has half the range, a much higher rate-of-fire, a firing arc twice as wide as the main beam (100 verses 55). It's visibility is set to invisible (I'm guessing that this would interfere with the "main beam" arc). All aircraft weapons can also have an anti-missile tag. What I'd propose is setting the secondary weapon to be able to target missiles, but give it a smaller angle so aircraft can zoom around the lumbering corvette and get past its defences. Then the landing ship comes along with its fancy anti missile-missiles and it's all "ha! you thought you had us figured out!".

I have experimented with the evade setting, and you don't have to set the evade setting much higher for it to work. A combination of being able to evade a little faster a little further and missiles just streak past.

It's very easy to beat a light scout, or a fightercraft (which is supposed to be able to evade missiles). Waladil has stated the basic strategy. Back when we had to manufacture alienium missiles, a common tactic shared on this forum was to have one alienium missile, and one sidewinder. You fired the sidewinder (because you had infiinte of those), and while the UFO was busy dodging that, you then fired the alenium missile. Saved ammo.

[Lightzy]

But building one corsair takes 30 days if you have one full workshop full of workers...

By the time it builds, I cannot take on anything flying at you anymore, and then it's just 1 corsair..

And so the question remains: how are you supposed to deal with the mediums+2 heavy fighters that show up around month 3-4 ? there's nothing that can come close to defeating them unless you have 6 hangars with 4 condors and 2 foxtrots and do double-wave on them...

I'm clueless!

[Max_Caine]

Build more workshops? 30 workers cuts the build time to 15 days. 45 workers cuts it to 7.5 days. Yes granted, the jump in building time between the MiG and the Corsair is extravagant and could certainly use dialling down but it's not a very good excuse to use when there are way around it. And in any case, it's not that hard to take down a landing ship and two heavy fighters. Firstly, the heavy fighters are faster than the landing ship, but not as fast as a Condor with afterburner on. Secondly, any squadron moves at the speed of the slowest object, and Landing ships are slower than Condors. Thirdly, the UFO AI generally targets the interceptors which get there first.

So!

You have two choices. 1) Strip the escorts from the main aircraft or 2) Splash the main ufo, then the escorts don't matter. Me? I prefer 1). Either way, you have to make multiple runs at the same squadron. Do you have 2 condors and a MiG? Well, you need to slow the MiG right down, so the heavy fighters target the Condors. Do you have 3 Condors? No worries! Take out 1 heavy fighter. Escape. Reload your aircraft. Take out the other fighter. Escape. Reload your aircraft. Third run, start attacking the landing ship. I have found it takes 4 alienium missiles to put down a heavy fighter, so in general I can take out both heavy fighters and deplete the anti-missile-missiles in two runs, with my Foxtrots waiting in the wings to have a crack at the landing ship.

[Waladil]

Also, pick your battles.

If you're behind in the air game then maybe you can't deal with larger ships in addition to escorts, so sometimes you'll have to let them go. Wait for a couple to come by without any escorts and you'll have a much easier time.

Getting a good manufacturing base up and running is an important strategy, but not something that's immediately obvious from the early game. I can usually manage with only a single Corsair per interceptor base (although if manpower and money allow I prefer having 2-3), so being able to produce one in about ten days is enough, which means you need around 3 workshops minimum.

I should point out that I managed to get to endgame with only Corsairs, Foxtrots, and Condors, it's manageable. (I couldn't get any of the later planes because of missing datacores T_T) Sometimes you will have to look at the enemy and realize "I don't have the firepower to take down that thing right now," sometimes you'll have to use complicated attack strategies including multiple runs. Sometimes you'll lose Condors, that's no biggie. (Losing Corsairs is a biggie, though.)

[Lightzy]

I think the game overall is so far from any kind of basic balance that discussing balance right now might be premature

[DonStealth]

Well, you need to slow the MiG right down.

How do I change the speed of the aircrafts?

[GizmoGomez]

The little bar thingy next to the plane portrait. It moves when you hit the afterburners, if you can't find it. Just click where you want it on the throttle, or drag it, I forget. I don't use it usually, though I probably should.

[lemm]

Also, how would you defeat the light scout if it can evade missiles and you only have 2 missiles on the condor and need both to crash it? If enemies could effectively dodge missiles it's basically game over for me ?

You have to stagger your missile fire so that the first missile forces an evasive role and the second missile hits on the cooldown period.

Condors have guns too. It's extremely easy to defeat a light scout without using missiles at all.

[Phoenix]

hmm to be honest. I'd like to be able to engage with up to 2-3 squadrons at the same time... I mean chaining them might be ok, but sometimes you miss the epic air battles, and you can do even fairly ok with lower tier aircrafts (although it costs you more in hangar space)