Interceptor immortality, what a great idea!

[ThunderGr]

Interesting.

I havent played anything but XCOM94, and 2012 but I might look that up to see exactly how they implemented it.

It was a pretty basic system. You could request a type of material from each of the function. The better your reputation with the faction, the more material they would give you. Each of them specialized at a specific material type, so requesting that one, would give you more than if any of the other two. After that request, your reputation returned to 0. You had your reputation increased by answering help requests in their territory and advancing soldiers belonging to that faction, you were losing reputation if you helped their rivals, refused a help request or got soldiers of their faction killed. Failing a mission would also increase your reputation with that faction a bit, for trying. Your reputation determined what type of recruits they would offer you. Negative reputation made them hostile.

I guess all reputation-related systems have to be similar in some way. Your proposition is more complex, of course.

Edited July 6, 2013 by ThunderGr

[GizmoGomez]

I had an idea after reading the v19.3 release announcement thread, and I posted it there. Here it is again, since it's very pertinent to this discussion as well:

I disagree with the indestructible interceptors; they break immersion, and honestly it sounds lazy (although I know you devs are anything but lazy; I'm just saying what it sounds like).

Idea for Fixing Indestructible Interceptors

Please give feedback

Instead of making them indestructible, simply give the player an "Emergency Disengage" button in addition to the retreat button.

This would have the pilot drop the plane out of the sky, making a powered (so it still actually flies and doesn't flip and fall) forced landing. The aircraft icon would speed up and get smaller (simulating a dive) and escape the battle within a matter of a couple seconds, as opposed to the regular retreat button that simply has them fly away from the battle (which can still let UFOs take them out if they're too far away from the edge).

This would require the full 72 hours of recover time PLUS the repair time for any damage it may have gotten PLUS an extra 20% damage due to the plane crashing (down to a minimum of 1%? health remaining). This should encourage the player not to simply hit the big red button any time they get scratched in combat, since it would actually add on damage and take an additional 3 days to recover before repairs can take place.

Also, if you crash in the ocean, the plane's dead. There should be a risk involved fighting over the ocean, if only because it makes the ground combat (or lack thereof) easier.

This way, if you really want to let your interceptor get destroyed you can, but there's a way to very rapidly escape the battle with some consequences. In essence, this method would produce the exact same results as having the interceptors be indestructible: The player can save his/her planes and not have to make new ones. The difference is that it doesn't "ruin" the experience for more "hard core" players by making the air combat more pansy, and it also makes a TON more sense. The only real gameplay difference is that the player now has to press a button. (Big whoop I say, there's a pause button, so reaction time is of no consequence.)

So, feedback anyone? Would this satisfy both sides?

[Dranak]

What is the big deal about immortal aircraft, then? Once we figure out how air combat works, what to do and how to do it, it's like the feature isn't even there.

No one seems to have noticed yet that this is more beneficial towards Iron Man mode, where you can be playing for 10, 20, 30 hours, and losing a lousy plane can be game over, and then a comment like "man this is way too hard, i'ma go back playing solitaire".

On regular, we lose a plane, reload save, or we might be screwed. So, does it REALLY make a difference? Is it really fair to pounce on the devs because of a potentially awesome feature that is not even relevant when the save/load feature is a couple clicks away?

And if you're playing Iron Man in an unstable Beta, well, good luck getting yourself burned.

EDIT: oh, and something else, i doubt most of these posts are coming from someone that has actually finished the game at least once, only way to get the WHOLE picture.

It's a big deal because it is completely illogical and inconsistent with the rest of the game. It could also become far more relevant in the future with further revisions to air combat that may cause you to actually take damage in air combat. If you want to never lose a plane, you can save scum that the same way you can save scum in ground combat to keep soldiers alive if you are so inclined.

As for ironman... you play it because it's harder, and because of having consequences and not being able to save scum. Permanent loss of AC is completely in keeping with that (and sort of makes having this feature disabled in ironman a reasonable compromise). The ability to lose is one of the big draws of ironman, as is having to recover from bad situations instead of just hitting the load button every time something bad happens. And yes, I play almost exclusively ironman in the beta already (with monthly backups in case of save corruption/getting completely screwed by bugs).

Just because the current cost of aircraft makes losing a couple catastrophic doesn't mean that it has to be so.

And considering that the final mission isn't fully implemented, and you have to mod the game just to make it show up (and it still isn't completable) of course most people haven't played it.

@Gizmo - I recommended something similar in the past, so I would whole heartedly support a change along those lines.

Edited July 6, 2013 by Dranak

[ThunderGr]

@GizmoGomez

Sounds interesting. I would, still, like a percentage of failing to make an emergency landing, thus, losing your plane, based on the amount of damage the plane had sustained. This would make sure you had more chances to get your plane back when it had more chance to survive the crash-landing and that heavily damaged planes would get a higher chance for the most probable outcome, that is, be destructed on impact. The ideal situation would be if that was depended on the pilot's experience but, well, this would mean including a pilot unit in the game, something I doubt it would be considered at this point...

[GizmoGomez]

Forgive me, I didn't quite follow what you were saying. You would like there to be a percentage change that "destroyed" planes, that is, shot down in the air combat completely, will still recover and not be destroyed?

EDIT:

Oh, no, you're saying that if the plane is very very heavily damaged, it won't be able to survive the emergency disengage landing, is that it?

EDIT2: Well, a percentage chance that it won't survive.

[ThunderGr]

Forgive me, I didn't quite follow what you were saying. You would like there to be a percentage change that "destroyed" planes, that is, shot down in the air combat completely, will still recover and not be destroyed?

I meant that I like the system you propose and I would like it to include the chance for the plane not to manage a successful emergency landing.

[GizmoGomez]

Alright, after reading it again that's what I realized you said. Yeah, that could work out well. Personally, I'd rather it be a successful landing every time if you're above 10% HP, but under that it could be a percentage change. Perhaps a 25% chance it explodes on impact?

[GizmoGomez]

Anyway, my idea has been met with approval so far, so I'm going to go ahead and post it in the Suggestions and Features request, and post links to my idea like mad on every thread that talks about the indestructible interceptor issue.

[ThunderGr]

Alright, after reading it again that's what I realized you said. Yeah, that could work out well. Personally, I'd rather it be a successful landing every time if you're above 10% HP, but under that it could be a percentage change. Perhaps a 25% chance it explodes on impact?

According to the idea, since the interceptor is expected to take 20% more damage during the emergency landing, it has to be a successful landing at above 20%+-5% HP, to avoid the player exploiting the threshold. Bellow that, a 2% chance to fail for each 1% damage starting from 20%+-5% sounds like a reasonable chance. You have some control over your survival chances and a good chance to survive, even at 1%(max destruction chance 48%, average destruction chance 38%, min destruction chance 28%).

[GizmoGomez]

I simplified the explosion chance to a flat 25% chance if you are at 1%HP.

I did this because a) you are likely to be at 1%HP a lot, since anywhere from 1% to 19% HP remaining before the landing will give you 1% HP, which is plenty of room for it to happen, and b) penalizing people that had up to 30% HP seemed a bit harsh. I mean, that's just under a third of your HP, you shouldn't explode for that, imo. That'd be too harsh.

Here is the link to my post in the Suggestions forum:

http://www.goldhawkinteractive.com/forums/showthread.php/6250-Alternative-Mechanic-to-Indestructible-Interceptors-Designed-to-Please-Everyone

Please read and comment on it, and if you like it, say so. I want the developers to recognize that it's a valid solution to the problem and that lots of people (hopefully) will/would/do like it. (So far, I've gotten no negative feed back. Of course, it's only been a few hours, so that may change).

Thanks!

[smoitessier]

Currently Free: Ballistic Weapons and ammo, Grenade updates, Stun weapons, missile updates, facility updates, weapon tier ammunition. More importantly here, aircraft ammunition and missiles.

Disconnect: this stuff appears by magic with no lead times. A large amount of it contains very rare alien technology. So we have a situation where Alenium torpedoes are endless, but the basic aircraft available to all major armed forces already in 1979, can't be supplied at the start of the game (for slight modification) to become Xeno-planes.

>Clunk<

I think that under the old system rules there should be funding/ research tension between the ground and air combat advancements. It's good decision making for X-Com games.

Indeed. Even if you get past one loss, larger UFOs are going to kick the butt of anything else you could put up, so it is too difficult at normal level in air combat.

Solution 1: All aircraft are recoverable and then possibly take time to repair.

Solution 2: All condors are free.

In both solutions, you are getting the planes. There are no pilot skills.

Controls: Both are controlled by hanger space. Both take 72 hours to get to base. In the first solution it's because everyone is in an A-Team series. In the second it's delivery from the funding nation and tweaking to Xeno-Standards.

I don't get the disconnect at all with the second option that I do with the first.

The second doesn't require anything additional in the game. No new mechanics, no new handwavium, and creates a sense of loss. The first doesn't make sense (see recovery location issues above) and creates a game of perceived hand holding. As mentioned UFO: ET got slated for this sort of thing. I was on those forums and people just couldn't get past immortal soldiers. Immortal pilots is less obvious, but will still get banged on about.

A smallish elephant regards the Condor's weapons. If you have Gatling lasers on it, you'll need to pay for those.

Now, this may provide enough balance left alone. That's your penalty for losing Condors. But what if even that is too much of a burden (frankly the whole game economy may be broken if it is)?

Well, if all of the alenium torpedoes and missiles are free, what on earth is the major hold up with these things. The base defence equivalent gets built in a heartbeat. Make these free too.

Now the above talks about Condors. What about all of the others? They all cost much more, take ages to build. What if we lose those?

Why not just an expansion of the above? If you lose a Corsair, then you can order another one. The delay in getting this piece of kit to your base will be longer, but it won't cost you anything. So, you get the sense of loss, you get the hassle of waiting for a new one, but you don;t lose the game because of it.

Where is all this lovely technology coming from? Well, against my cynical nature, Xenonauts does indeed share it's research findings with all of it''s funding partners. They race off to retool their aerospace industry on a war footing. All of those fighter crashes go straight into their resources, so they have enough alloys and Alenium to supply you with the odd aircraft.

I think you nailed it, at least most of it,

Free human tech? check including migs.

Free human/hybrid tech/aircrafts? hmm maybe free, or just much much cheaper, subcontractors could do 90% for free perhaps.

Free Corsairs Marauders and up?: The world governments could give you the airframes and perhaps avionics for free if they had enough alien alloy stockpiles from all the UFOs you shot down over their territories, but they wouldn't be able to give you the Alienium for the Powerplant since it's destroyed in crash sites. That should be up to you to provide.

Free Alenium missiles rockets grenades? Hell no! Again it doesn't grow on trees or on this planet for that matter, it could be given away, if and only if anyone can capture a landed ufo, since it's destroyed in crash sites.

I think that under the old system rules there should be funding/ research tension between the ground and air combat advancements. It's good decision making for X-Com games.

Yes absolutely, and it doesn't have to be $$$ based, after all this is a war footing industry, price is no object. The attainment of limited resources will be enough of "tension builder" "Do I give my team decent explosives on the field, or do i let the migs suck up all the Alienium? or fuel a corsair's powerplant????

This would balance migs v/s fighters handsomely as well, since a torpedo would need more Alienium than sidewinders

What about Alien alloys? Yeah it's your call again, to make better troop armor/weapons or gatling lasers for your jets.

[thothkins]

Another thread has been started by Gizmo Gomez for this, so I've posted a suggestion following Gizmo's suggestion there.

[SalsaDoom]

I had an idea after reading the v19.3 release announcement thread, and I posted it there. Here it is again, since it's very pertinent to this discussion as well:

The only real gameplay difference is that the player now has to press a button. (Big whoop I say, there's a pause button, so reaction time is of no consequence.)

Except that many aircraft get one-hit insta-destroyed by the larger UFO's, so you couldn't really press the button unless you did so before you even took a point of damage. This sucks, because sometimes your not sure how much damage you'll actually take from a single hit unless you have memorized it from previous encounters.

[SalsaDoom]

I haven't read every post on this topic yet, but I haven't seen anyone direct answer this yet: How will auto-resolve work unless this feature is present? As it is, auto-resolve would be complete suicide. Basically, any situation where you lose your irreplaceable aircraft isn't going to work with auto resolve.

I don't mind the air combat system, but sometimes when you have a swarm of little fighters going all over the map it gets tiresome to deal with them individually, I'd consider using auto in those cases -- but not if it ended up costing me the game. I can't see auto-resolve being of any use at all unless the system that is exactly in place remains so -- or, auto-resolve uses this system and manual control uses another system someone above has mentioned.

[GizmoGomez]

Except that many aircraft get one-hit insta-destroyed by the larger UFO's, so you couldn't really press the button unless you did so before you even took a point of damage. This sucks, because sometimes your not sure how much damage you'll actually take from a single hit unless you have memorized it from previous encounters.

I would hope you wouldn't be taking Condors to fight a Battleship.

I haven't read every post on this topic yet, but I haven't seen anyone direct answer this yet: How will auto-resolve work unless this feature is present? As it is, auto-resolve would be complete suicide. Basically, any situation where you lose your irreplaceable aircraft isn't going to work with auto resolve.

I don't mind the air combat system, but sometimes when you have a swarm of little fighters going all over the map it gets tiresome to deal with them individually, I'd consider using auto in those cases -- but not if it ended up costing me the game. I can't see auto-resolve being of any use at all unless the system that is exactly in place remains so -- or, auto-resolve uses this system and manual control uses another system someone above has mentioned.

These are all valid points, and warrant consideration.

Just off the top of my head, here's what I have to say about these:

First point, one-shot kills. I would hope that you wouldn't take relatively weak air craft to fight larger ships, as that sounds like suicide to me. However, in some cases that is what happens, whether it be because you didn't modernize quickly enough, or because your more modern craft were destroyed (or grounded, now). My solution to this would be to make starting air craft cheaper (though free wouldn't make sense with my proposed system, it'd be one or the other). This would allow you to take losses mid-late game (since you'll hopefully have more money to spend on aircraft), if you decided to use inferior air craft against overwhelming forces (which I don't recommend if you can help it, but in some cases you cannot).

Second point, air combat auto-resolve:

This is simple: If you do the auto-resolve, your aircraft will automatically do an emergency disengage if it's outmatched. Since the system is (to my knowledge) going to be based on preset configurations (i.e. three condors vs a light scout will always win, one condor vs a scout will always lose, etc.) (Disclaimer, this might not be it; this is what I remember), if you're configuration loses to the enemy configuration, you'll simply have your aircraft land with damage (randomized, perhaps?) and be recovered in 72 hours, just like it would be under the immortal airplane mechanic we have now.

[ThunderGr]

Well, if you use weak aircraft to fight strong UFOs you will have to take the hit and learn. If that cost you the game, so be it. Next time you will do better. Noone is born knowing the correct tactical and strategic decisions. Weep and learn.

[Ol' Stinky]

One weird element to the new system is that running out of fuel's less scary. I've sent out a couple of foxtrots to a really distant UFO a couple of times now, knowing that they won't have the fuel to survive. They fire their missiles then run out of fuel midcombat and crash. I did this after killing any fighters I can, naturally, so that I get the foxes back before the next wave.

I'm not going to pretend that this is some sort of super-strategy that will single-handedly defeat the alien menace, but it highlights the apathy I now have towards my pilots' wellbeing. I think even a nominal cost is needed. I still think Thot's suggestion of having to pay for the aircraft weapons is the best one, as it means you get a lot of leeway at the start, but it becomes hairier as you progress. I'm not going to employ kamikaze tactics if I have to pay for another six alenium torpedo launchers or whatever.

[Gazz]

One weird element to the new system is that running out of fuel's less scary. I've sent out a couple of foxtrots to a really distant UFO a couple of times now' date=' knowing that they won't have the fuel to survive. They fire their missiles then run out of fuel midcombat and crash.[/quote']

This is a feature that should actually stay - regardless of how destroyed interceptors are handled.

Running out of fuel in combat is not the same as crashing. It means not having enough fuel to return to base.

The fighters perform an emergency landing, refuel, and fly back to base.

The downtime symbolises that without modeling / visualising all the details. (that you have no control over so they aren't gameplay-relevant)

[kabill]

So, I bought the game yesterday and played through the first couple of months (before a bug ate my save-game). I've been lurking for a while and when I first spotted this change I wasn't massively convinced either.

Then, a day or two into October, I screw up and two of my planes fall out of the sky. Having completely forgotten at that point that my craft would come back, I went to buy some more (expecting them to be too expensive and therefore the game being pretty much over) and when it tells me there's no space in the hangers I remember.

From a new player's perspective, then, this was awesome, since it meant I hadn't just lost the game a fraction of the way through (as a result of not knowing my planes would get one-shot-killed/as a result of accidentally not setting my missiles to not fire). While I basically lost control of the skies for half of October (which felt like a fairly hefty penalty, although I never got to see what effect this had on funding), it was nice to have an opportunity to learn from that in the same game, rather than suddenly being at an end point with not much of a time to reflect on what went wrong.

On the other hand, I do find the explanation for it a little jarring and, of the ideas I've seen around here, I'm more inclined towards free/cheaper (subsidised?) aircraft than magic repair work. Perhaps, if (early) planes were free, there could be a hit to funding/score penalty (or, a larger one, if there is one already) for each one which goes down (since they're not cheap, and losing them implies incompetence/futility).

[StellarRat]

It sucks and I totally disagree with the premise. First changes that discourages me from playing. It was not a problem after the AC costs were lowered.

[DNK]

The real issue is that the campaign is currently way too hard (V18).

This is 1/2 my fault and 1/2 the game's. It's my fault because I simply haven't built enough workshops to rapidly pump out necessary replacements and new aircraft types. It's my first play-through, so it's to be expected. I didn't specialize my bases enough, and I ended up with a filled-up generalist base that has no spare room for more manufacturing.

The game's fault, however, is the extreme expense of new aircraft (aside from manufacturing requirements) AND new bases. Why new bases, you ask? Because at the outset of the game you just can't afford to build that many (1, maybe 2 by the second month), and you end up losing out on a lot of missions for it for each stage of the invasion. Later, you lose large amounts of funding not only for poor ratings but for permanent territory loss.

Too many important things cost too much money. The overall money balance needs to be fixed. With that fixed, players then just need to realize that 2 workshops won't cut it for production after Corsairs come into play. One base will need to be dedicated to pushing out aircraft constantly to fill up the hangars in all the others.

Oh, and additionally the "losing territories" mechanic is way too harsh and unforgiving. I lose a ton of funding because, again, bases are too expensive, plus base attack missions are nigh impossible without a 12 or 14 man squad, which itself requires a, what, $750K investment just for the aircraft? Again, the real issue is just how unforgiving and challenging the overall campaign is. That's basic balance. This new mechanic is unnecessary, and once it's in place, all new balancing has to include it.

Edited July 7, 2013 by DNK

[Lightzy]

That's why it's much more realistic that planes automatically disengage and return to base with a "critically damaged" status (72 hours repair time) when they get under a certain % hitpoints.

Why realistic?

Because

1) All xeno craft are faster and more agile than alien craft, significantly so (represented in the game)

2) Xeno craft *CAN* take multiple hits from uber-powerful alien ships. Especially corsair and onwards.

[StellarRat]

Sure. Why don't we have emergency disengagement for our soldiers too? Experienced soldiers with good armor are really expensive and hard to replace. Losing a couple of them will really mess up your Ironman game too. If they get hit they immediately run off the battlefield like screaming little girls in track shoes. You can then recover them at the hospital ER in three days or so.

[smoitessier]

I'm pretty sure a corsair can only take max 2 shots from a bomber and Corvette in v19.2, Migs are dead meat on the 1st hit

[svidangel]

Sure. Why don't we have emergency disengagement for our soldiers too? Experienced soldiers with good armor are really expensive and hard to replace. Losing a couple of them will really mess up your Ironman game too. If they get hit they immediately run off the battlefield like screaming little girls in track shoes. You can then recover them at the hospital ER in three days or so.

Would it be better if they were screaming like little girls in bear traps?