Some suggestions regarding aircraft and the geoscape

[RulerOfNothing]

This occured to me when I was playing Xenonauts, and had sent my chinook to the other side of the world, which caused it to announce halfway through that it was low on fuel (which it was). Now while I should have seen that coming, I think it would be useful if the geoscape gave more useful information regarding aircraft range.

There are a few ways I can see this being done:

Firstly, if a mission target is too far away for the selected aircraft(s), the game should prevent the aircraft being sortied, but only against stationary targets (because moving targets might come into range while your aircraft are en-route)

Secondly, there could be a new mode which shows the ranges of various aircraft overlayed on the geoscape map. I am not quite sure what exactly is the best way to do this, but I think it would be useful to be able to see how much of the world a planned base could defend.

[anotherdevil]

I think just a distance to target column, or having the bases listed by their distance to the target would be best. After all if it's within your radar range, then your planes should be able to reach it from that base.

[RulerOfNothing]

I suppose that works as well. What I was referring to was that I had set up secondary bases with combat aircraft, but hadn't managed to equip those bases with soldiers and transports (and all of the Corvettes I was shooting down were on the other side of the world from my elite-ish soldiers)

[Sathra]

Distance to target would be most likely, having operational range circles was brought up previously, but they would look...odd. Misshapen blobs really.

[RulerOfNothing]

Pretty sure that the range circles looking odd was a reason for Xenonauts using a flat map, as mentioned here, so the appearance of the operational range circles wouldn't be too much of a problem (unless they cluttered up the geoscape too much), but I think a list of distances to the target would be better (especially if the intercept window listed the ranges of the aircraft next to the distance)

[Sathra]

Its partly due to the flat map and the operational range being based on how much fuel it takes to return from the current point to the base.

So it'd look like an amoeba eating the base I guess?

[RulerOfNothing]

When I say that the map is flat, that means that the world is not curved (as shown by the radar range being a circle and not heavily distorted), so the aircraft operational range would also be a circle.

[anotherdevil]

but it's not, because if you travel back towards the base then you have more room to go to other places. The operational is essentially the first 50% of fuel, as the second 50% is used for returning to base. Does that make sense? It's not going to be a circle either way, trust me

[RulerOfNothing]

Well, if a plane uses 30% of its fuel to go somewhere, then goes back towards its base with 10% of its fuel, it won't be able to go farther than if it used 40% of its fuel to go somewhere, so therefore the operational range (which I thought was defined as the locations the plane could safely travel to without running out of fuel) should be a circle.

[Straker]

I would love to see in flight refueling allowed, at least for the Chinook, until longer ranged transports become available.

[anotherdevil]

No because no matter where the plane goes, it always has to be able to go back to its base. So part of the range will always stretch over the base. Now say it has used 30% of it's fuel to get to where it is, then the remaining 20% allocated for chasing the UFO would be a circle around the interceptor (the extra distance it can travel) EXCEPT for the fact that it must be able to travel back to base, so the 'tail of the amoeba' as I believe Sathra put it will always cover the base. Perhaps think of it as a tear drop, with the pointy bit located at the base, and the rounded end being the range out from the aircraft.

The range of the plane is essentially where it can fly, taking into account its return to base. Of course there are other ways to do it, but that depends entirely on the ability to program it.

I might suggest another column, rather than distance to target, some of the later interceptors may have massive fule capacities, so perhaps estimated fuel level upon interception would be more appropriate? (As in, if the interceptor got to the location the UFO is at now, how much fuel would it have left)

[RulerOfNothing]

Yeah, I guess I forgot you might want to know how much further your in-flight aircraft can go.

[Chris]

Ah yes, I did actually propose a more informational Launch Interceptors screen just before the Expo build, but we never got round to implementing it.

This was the basic layout proposed:

www.xenonauts.com/devimages/interceptwindow.jpg

It doesn't have a range to target on it, which is the obvious omission (the Heath column a lesser one). The idea is that the aircraft are sorted by whichever base is closest to the target.

This could be expanded and improved for the new GUI style I think.

[anotherdevil]

What about an 'estimated fuel on arrival' (EFA) or 'estimated fuel at interception' (EFI) column?

[Sathra]

Estimated fuel on arrival would be more useful yeah. Might be a bit odd to get used to (especially since it'd invariably be wrong) but it'd be useful.

[Straker]

Still like the idea of in flight refueling by local national forces. It could be abstracted to just allowing for a longer range than currently allowed.