Indestructible interceptors?

[raziel1981]

Be it air or ground combat i rather have an unforgiving game then one that makes excuses for my failure. Im with jeabn luc on this. If air combat is that big a problem just make the planes cheaper. Balance comes before realism imho

[Solver]

This is a very interesting issue.

On the one hand, the idea of indestructible interceptors is exactly the sort of thing I normally dislike. It's a mechanic that treats you gently when you fail, and always having an interceptor once built is very reminiscent of the dumbing down in contemporary games. On the other hand, I agree tat air combat feels too important currently. I find the first engagement with a Corvette for instance to be absolutely crucial, if I lose a plane there, I am toast. Air combat should not be a snoozefest like in the original Xcom.

I definitely want a game where it's possible to lose, and here the two main ways of losing should be ground combat (you run out of soldiers to effectively respond to missions) and funding nations (enough of them lose trust in you to pull out). Losing in air combat should not be that punishing, but it should be a contributing factor. I guess if you ground critically damaged aircraft for long enough, you ensure that it still costs you a couple of UFOs that you can not engage.

[asdf64]

Having the Interceptors able to recover from any situation with time seems to negate much of the point of the aircombat. While not the core of the game, it should be a managing segment that if you screw up in, should impose a consequence. Time alone as a consequence is inefficient, and it just seems cheap that a player doesn't have to worry about paying for their mistakes in air combat beyond basically having their interceptors in a time out.

While I understand that the player shouldn't be damned for a single mistake, since that creates save scumming, it should definitely hurt the player for losing their aircraft, and therefore some amount of money should have to be paid if you intend to put repair in.

[Solver]

One solution somewhere in the middle could be to make air combat itself a bit less forgiving, like remove the alien missiles that can insta-kill an interceptor fairly early on. I am not sure if it is a random chance or what, but I've encountered that with, I think, Fighter UFOs.

[Lightzy]

Well actually it was my idea

But it's best not to open discussion by presenting it as 'indestructible interceptors!', because it colors peoples perception with the silliness of the idea rather than the merit of the game mechanic.

Best present it as "interceptors doing an emergency disengage/flee when too heavily damaged to continue the fight" like u did in the post, which ensures a better objective discussion

I think it's for the best too.

And I don't think you really need to increase repair time for planes. the way the game is set up now, the max time for repairs should be no longer than 2-5 days (and of course, no cost for repairs, only the general monthly maint. fees).

Any longer than that, and you retain the 'game over' status of having lost a plane (since you are essentially out of the game during that period. Especially later on when the silly alien fighters start hunting your chinook)

Edited May 27, 2013 by Lightzy

[Squibie]

What i hate about the idea is the fact that when upgrading to next tier you would sometimes have to delete/dismiss working planes. I usually start losing condors just as corsairs are manufactured.

[lightgemini]

Idea 3 sounds good enough, I DONT like it but I understand its an elegant and logical solution, but you need to be PUNISHED for "losing" the plane. I believe you should ditch the plane for 6 days at least and pay money for it, because fail is fail no matter how "streamline" you want to go.

In the other hand, why not add a "Indestructible" boolean in airplanes config? if TRUE then the plane is treated as suggestion 3, if FALSE then its gone. That way one can easily mod back the original Xcom way just because you cant keep everybody happy. You could even have some planes one way or another if theres a point in doing so, but its having the options available what makes a win for everybody at the end of the day.

[smoitessier]

I'd rather see a reduction of build time for T2+ AC with the premise that friendly nations are feverishly trying to help you, even allow you to buy or rent them later on in the game with a 72H delay. This could only apply for the previous tier technology (same as the LFs with lasers etc).

But if you want to go with the "run away!" concept, then of course the repairs should cost money and most importantly RESOURCES! While playing V18.5 I found myself with a ton load of alloys and alienium , it felt broken that I had so much honestly. Also every time you fire a missile you should loose a unit of alienum too.

[FauxCatMeat]

Maybe your planes can still be shot down but you will have to do a ground combat mission to recover it. So you risk losing more soldiers and having to wait for it to be repaired while costing some cash as well?

[Gauddlike]

Would dropships be destructible still or would they also become invulnerable?

What about dropships escorted by invincible interceptors?

I don't like the principle of invincible aircraft but I haven't really seen an alternative that addresses the issues as well as that does.

I guess making the interceptors invincible also makes the proposed auto resolve for air combat easier to do as well.

No chance of losing your whole squadron to the rng, just have them sit out for a few days.

If you cannot lose aircraft what will be your incentive to players to upgrade?

There may need to be a steep curve for enemy craft difficulty in order to push the player towards replacing their existing aircraft for a new one as they will no longer need to replace losses.

Making earlier tier interceptors unable to deal with higher tier enemies is one way.

The difficulty would be not forcing a player out of the game because they don't upgrade their fleet quickly enough.

Not upgrading means not shooting down enemies which leads to less income which may leave the player unable to upgrade.

That is the same problem faced by the current system, I just feel not having to replace losses removes part of the incentive (or at least opportunity) to upgrade and should be considered.

[StellarRat]

I'm not at all in favor of indestructible AC. I don't have a problem with easier replacement mechanics of some kind. Another possible solution (besides the ones in my previous post) would be to reduce the effectiveness of alien defensive fire. That would reduce the number of AC losses unless the player was really pigheaded about pressing the attack, in which case, he would deserve losing AC.

[Chris]

Ah yes, it was indeed Lightzy's idea rather than StellarRat's. Updated OP accordingly.

I imagine it can be added as a flag in gameconfig.xml or something - if it is on, when a plane reaches 0 health, it is not destroyed but (say) 5 days is added to the repair time when it gets back. Then there's a penalty for getting "shot down" relative to being "damaged".

The "cost" associated with this is that you're without your plane for at least one, possibly two waves of UFOs...which leaves the funding nations undefended and reduces your funding.

[Buzzles]

Buzzles - nah, even with advanced weapons the early-game interceptors have no chance against end-game UFOs. Which is why this is sort of necessary. If the early-game interceptors did have a chance against end-game UFOs, there'd be no point building the late-game interceptors.

Yeeess...you'll have to forgive me here as I've not played in a while, but unless there's been some massive swing in the economy, by the time you get to mid/late game you're generally quite well established and can afford to lose an aircraft or two before it becomes a massive issue.

It's only ever been in the first few months where losing an airplane is the death knell.

[Waladil]

Reflecting on this thread, and people's various realism v. gameplay and difficulty v. forgiveness arguments, I'd like to recommend the following idea. It's not fully finished, it's not fully realized, but it's an idea:

For ALL aerial vehicles (human and alien, dropship and interceptor), have them remain on the air combat map for a short time (2-5 seconds?) after being shot down. During this time they can be targetted and fired upon, and all missiles will continue to track and hit them. As their health plummets into the negatives, things are changed on the geoscape.

For the human vessels, they start taking more and more damage, before ultimately being completely destroyed. So there's, say, a 5 day extra repair time if they're shot down (representing salvage efforts and the extra repairs from impact), and up to 5 MORE days if the aliens took it down to the very edge of death. At the worst, that interceptor could be out of the game for about two weeks. (5 days for being shot down, 5 days for post-shootdown repairs, 4 days for regular repairs.) Dropships that start taking extra damage will be more and more likely to have deaths among the troops: If they're just tagged and mostly control the crash, most of your soldiers will live with minor injuries. If the dropship got hit hard, well the frame is salvageable, but the troops... no-one survived, sir.

Alien vessels also have this overdamage math. No longer is it random whether an alien vessel took "severe" or "minor" damage. It's now calculated based on how much overdamage it takes. Moreover, I'd recommend adding a "destroyed" level where the crash is unrecoverable (no crash assault mission at all). So a smart player can calibrate missions to his/her own readiness: If they need the money and have the capable troops, they want to just barely damage enemy birds and get the most loot from a minor-damage crash. Or they can hit it hard and have an easier run on the ground, good for training the noobies. Or, if they don't consider it "worth their time" (for whatever reason), they can blow that sumbitch to smithereens.

Note on the AI: The computer AI would target nearby active human interceptors before trying to overdamage the ones crashing. So covering your weak birds would help them be salvageable, even if you have to spend extra time repairing them. The auto-controls on the human interceptors would automatically switch to the next active enemy, and wouldn't try to overdamage enemy ships at all, you'd have to manually order that. (Possibly add an extra UI button/keyboard command to continue firing on selected target past initial shootdown.)

Final note: For the "destroyed" enemy birds, including fighters, add a small amount of alloys (+alenium?) as long as they're taken down over land, from scavenging the debris. There'd be bound to be something useful there, even if it's not much. (Like, 2 alien alloys per fighter. Maybe even just 1.)

So this would add another level of realism, where planes can go down without being completely destroyed but might actually be destroyed, AND add a level of tactics to the human side, both offensively and defensively. Seems to me like it might be able to satisfy all sides? Feel free to critique it, y'all. (Biggest problem I see: More work for you and the rest of the coders, Chris.)

Edited May 28, 2013 by Waladil

[TrashMan]

Another change like unlimited ammo that maybe makes the game little better but makes my heart cry blood tears. eh...

I feel your pain.

I think lower plane costs can be explaned by the govrnments pitching in directly since they are such a big investment, so most of the costs are handeled by the government.

However, that would mean loosing planes (and thus investment) would not be looked favorably by the government that helped built it (which would be the country in which the plane was built...or maybe all of them).

[Lightzy]

What's so strange about fighters, who are faster than the alien ships anyway, doing an emergency disengage when outgunned? It's perfectly logical, it does not dumb down the game at all, and fixes one of the biggest design problems in a 'no-fuss' way, not requiring the creation of all kinds of super-complex systems like suggested here...

Just instead of the "lost contact" you get a "performing an emergency disengage!" and the fighter returns to base for 2-5 days repair (depending upon geoscape ufo-invasion speed balance)

no fuss solution

[Waladil]

Because, Lightzy, it's too easy. Yes, it's no fuss no muss -- but this game has definitely attracted a certain kind of clientele. Lots of people want a hard, unforgiving game. They want mistakes to be punished. Of course, I suspect that many of them don't actually want that, they just think they do. (Technically, I think they want to succeed at a punishing game -- whether they're actually good enough to do so is another question entirely.)

But, my internet armchair psychology aside, what they are asking for is hard decisions and punishing results for making bad calls. My suggestion a couple posts above yours provides for potentially punishing results, but something softer than it is now while adding extra tactics and depth. So it wont punish you too much unless you REALLY botch -- like sending one ship alone and outgunned.

(Also, your fighters aren't faster than a lot of enemy ships -- go toe to toe with an enemy Interceptor and try to escape.)

[Buzzles]

If the issue is funding rather than time with jets, you could simply borrow the same code that runs when a dropship is shot down:

Set % chance of crashing when "destroyed" in the air combat. If it passes the check, the jet is recovered but heavily damaged. Only cost then is time to repair rather than time to rebuild+money to rebuild.

[Gauddlike]

I would limit that to only the higher tier interceptors built using alien alloys Buzzles.

An F-17 or Mig should be destroyed in practically any crash but they should also be fairly cheap and quick to replace as they are provided by funders with just a few modifications.

Alien alloys should be tough enough to survive (at least some types of) impact and leave enough of the craft intact to repair.

I would also have the chance adjustable in the xml and set individually by difficulty level.

Easy means they will likely survive most crashes, on superhuman surviving a crash should be a nice memorable surprise when it happens.

The down side is leaving the survival chance in the hands of the rng.

That could lead to the dark side of save scumming to try and get the best outcome from a failed intercept.

Adjusting the chance by difficulty may help with that.

Construction time and costs can be significantly reduced by suggesting that your funding nations are building parts of the aircraft in modular form in various facilities.

When you need a replacement you requisition the required modules and bolt them on to an alien alloy airframe in a few days.

Not giving one funder access to the whole aircraft explains why you are still the only group able to consistently down the larger alien craft.

[Lightzy]

You can make a hard and unforgiving game without making it broken. Right now the mechanic is simply broken, and not working as intended (as chris wrote).

Making planes shift it back to base when too heavily damaged reduces absolutely nothing from the experience, but rather places the air-combat mechanic back where it should be within the general focus of the game.

There are other ways to do it, sure, but this is the most sensible and convenient way which is safest both for the coders and for the players, and especially, it makes sense to anyone.

[Gauddlike]

You may not feel that anything is lost from the experience but that will not necessarily be the case for everyone

I wouldn't really say it makes sense that some of your craft are unkillable either, doesn't to me at least.

It may be a necessary decision given time and budgetary constraints however which I can live with if a better option doesn't present.

[raziel1981]

Lightzy - the "emergency escape maneuver" makes absolutely no sense at all. It was one thing having the unlimited ammo choice made under the reasoning that the game should avoid micromanagement and its a whole other making the interceptors indestructible. Like I said earlier - they should be cheaper to balance their destruction or (at the worse case) have a major repairing down time under a certain probability check just like the chance of a soldier that was shot down in battle ending up in a hospital instead of the morgue.

Original X-COM had all these terrible "complications", yet amazingly most of the older gamers here finished it. Heck, and they loved it just for that and to a great extent supported this kick starter under the hope of seeing a lot of the "old school" XCOM come back to life.

XCOM:EU had all the oversimplification I could stomach and I'm troubled (to say the least) that this game appears to be taking a similar direction.

[Cwell]

After a day or so and some reflexion mixed with ideas from this thread, i changed my mind.

I'd rather see the same system used for the UFO crashes (to determine how much they are damaged) adapted for our side.

F17 & MIG-32 would have a high change of being very damaged & possibly destroyed if shot down, with extended repair times, but alien-upgraded next-gen ones should tolerate gradually more in crash-landing. That would serve a double purpose, they can still be destroyed, but not straight up in the skies.

There is still a monetary cost issue, if you loose one and can't really move on, there's a system flaw somewhere.

I still like the idea of having projects requiring a set minimum of Engineers and not simply a total cost of "Engineer's day", it would help in this topic's matter. You'd be able to play with both money & Engineers to determine a cost, thus being able to reduce monetary costs. I'd address other issues too but that is not the subject here.

[flashman]

When F17 were cheap instant buys things were easier - £100k and poof your ready to go. The MIG 32 needs build time and costs dramatically reduced.

The costs should be for combat readiness and transfer costs. Just change the manufacture "Mig32 Combat Ready"

For the research of the first advanced interceptor add a short paragraph,

"In order to speed up production you have agreed to share the burden of fighter construction with the funding nations."

[Chris]

But if we vastly reduce the cost and production time of aircraft, then you've got a situation where planes are presumably going to cost less and be faster to manufacture than a vehicle and not much more than a suit of advanced armour.

So either you'll have to have planes be unrealistically fast to manufacture and cheap to build relative to other manufacturable items (making them essentially expendable), or you have to balance the game around the fact that you're expected to lose a few expensive planes along the way. But if you go for the latter, you're in a situation where if a player is good enough at the air combat not to lose planes, he won't have any money problems throughout the entire game because planes are expensive and it's not a cost they have to pay.

If you're going to make planes expendable, I don't see why you wouldn't make them expensive but immune from permanent destruction. It's not like having expendable planes wouldn't make the game easier too.