Enough of the Fighters already!!

[Ringa]

Hi everyone,

First of all I'm loving the game and hugely enjoyed following the development through kickstarter, alpha up to now (ahh desura why make things complicated!)

Anyway we're on steam now which is fantastic. To the meat of the post.....

The fighters are hugely annoying, be it 1 fighter or a wing of 3. with trial and error I can take them all down with the right mixture of condors\falcons, usually without losing a plane.

But tbh that's a lie....save scumming is the only way I've found to keep on going.

If I lose:

1 plane=In trouble

2 planes=F*$£!D but maybe recoverable.

3 planes=Game over man, game over

My proposal (and apologies if I should have put this in another thread):

Some type of reward wouldn't hurt for taking down fighters (or even taking down scouts or whatever over the sea.)

Pretty simple, but take them down and you get a message like the following "North America\Europe\Soviet Union\Judeans Peoples Front awards you 20k\30k\40k per UFO you've just shot down, and they have a more positive rating of you." So cash reward and then...

+5k or whatever per monthly funding

At the moment there's too many fighters and for me at least, it's ruining the game, either make the fighters worth taking down or get rid, and don't get me started on the heavy fighters and bombers!

Thank you for reading.

Edited July 7, 2013 by Ringa

[Max_Caine]

So the new totally-recoverable-interceptors-if-shot-down mechanic doesn't do anything for you, then.

[Ringa]

Hi Max, nope haven't seen that exploit yet.

Invincible interceptors does sound like a boon

You're obviously a veteran judging by your post count, do the points I make have no merit?

[Max_Caine]

Exploit?

Oh dear.

I would suggest reading in order:

Prologue: The Stirring of War

The Big Reveal.

"There is no fire in Hell that burns hot enough for this level of Heresy..."

Wait, wait! We can make this work!

With apologies to the writers of the other threads.

And, well, your points did have merit. And they still do, not just as much now as they did.

EDIT: Try saying the quote in the kind of tone that an agent of the Emperor's Most Holy Inquistion might say before declaring Exterminatus on a planet.

EDIT 2: Found the original discussion on this matter, added it to the list.

Edited July 7, 2013 by Max_Caine

[Ringa]

Max_Caine apologies for offence, genuinly wasn't intended.

I'm baffled that my reply (meant in jest) made my original post less valid.

Heyho, thank you for the links to the other discussions, some of which I've read already, some of which I haven't so will give them a whirl.

If you take your 'I'm familiar with this game' hat off, and came to it as a newcomer; would you come to the same conclusions as me?

Take care, and thanks for the links.

Edited July 7, 2013 by Ringa

[Max_Caine]

Hm, I do apologise, I meant no offence when I presented those links. The idea behind the recoverable fighters is now you can sink a ton of cash into a fighter and if you loose it in-game you don't then have to sink a ton of cash into another fighter. This mitigates the issue of fighter squadrons because you haven't lost everything, you simply have to wait 3 days to get back the things that you have lost, rather than wait x number of days, tie up production AND sink a fresh ton of cash into fightercraft. When you wrote "exploit" I genuinely took it to mean that you weren't aware of the new system, and I thought that you would be best informed of what the change is. So! Red-faced, I do apologise for taking you at face-value, when I perhaps should have re-read.

As I wrote, your points did have merit, in that prior to recoverable fightercraft, if you're not careful, your investment in fightercraft can mean having to reload if you loose more than a couple of aircraft. As things stand now, if a squadron of alien UFOs on CAP take out a squadron of your aircraft, then you have to wait a few days, (and possibly have to go through a wave or two without being able to intervene) and you're back in action. They still do have merit, insofar as to say that inattention can make life more difficult. It is especially frustrating to have damaged craft that are capable of taking out a juicy target, but be unable to do so because there's a patrol of interceptors swarming around your base.

Bear in mind that you only have (or should have) just one squadron of fightercraft on CAP in any particular wave. It's easy to work out which squadron is on CAP, as they make a beeline for your aircraft, so in theory at least, it should be possible to abort an interception if you know that a squadron of alien craft is trying to intercept you. This could stand some reinforcement, which gives me an idea. You may or may not be aware that I and an artist are working on producing a Xenopedia class guide for the various alien races. What I might do is work on a set of Xenopedia guides for the various UFO mission types, and tie those in to the appropriate point in time. You see, I firmly believe that things should come as a surprise for a player, but as a "recoverable" surprise. The first time an alien UFO dodges a missile, that shouldn't spell death for the fightercraft (which is why I believe light scouts should be the first to dodge, rather than dedicated alien interceptors). The first time you experience an alien interception, that should come as a surprise, but then following that surprise, you should then get told about it so you know what to look for!

EDIT: A single fightercraft on CAP is as close as it gets to a "recoverable surprise" for that kind of misison. If your interceptors our out on an intercept, they can handle a fightercraft without too much trouble. If they;re coming back from a mission, a single fightercraft isn't that hard to escape from, or take out. I would say that the first CAP mission you encounter should always be verses an interceptor, rather than your dropship!

Edited July 7, 2013 by Max_Caine

[Ringa]

Thank you for the thorough explanation Max, perhaps I was too hasty with the scenario of:

1) all my combat aircraft are lost.

2) Have about 10K left in the budget

3) When I fast forward (time wise) it's mostly fighters I see on the map which I can't take down

4) If I send a chinook up to a crash\landing site it'll be shot down unless im very lucky.

Will read the threads you've posted to learn a bit more, remind me to pick easy mode, normal is too mad!

Seriously though, thank you so much for the reply, that's what beta balance is all about...that and more rewards for shooting the UFOs down hehe.

Very late here so offski, nn max, ty again

[ThunderGr]

Exploit?

Oh dear.

I would suggest reading in order:

Prologue: The Stirring of War

The Big Reveal.

"There is no fire in Hell that burns hot enough for this level of Heresy..."

Wait, wait! We can make this work!

With apologies to the writers of the other threads.

And, well, your points did have merit. And they still do, not just as much now as they did.

EDIT: Try saying the quote in the kind of tone that an agent of the Emperor's Most Holy Inquistion might say before declaring Exterminatus on a planet.

EDIT 2: Found the original discussion on this matter, added it to the list.

ROTFL...Very nice titles for the links. I am still laughing.

[xcomnaut]

I agree, we need some kind of reward for taking down alien fighters. Right now there is a win win situation for aliens. We get nothing for killing them or lose much for getting killed. At least remove a chance when fighters appear without medium or larger alien ship. At my game(V18 steam) I get 60% fighters without any larger ship. I'm losing funding money cause there is no gain for killing them. Next month I'll be at negative funding

I hope further builds will have better balance.

[Dranak]

Aaron has said that they intend to have fewer fighters in future builds. Personally I like the idea of fighters, but there's just way too many of them currently.

[DNK]

They'd be fine as currently (V18) implemented if they were a bit easier to take down. I've not yet figured out how to consistently take down a 3-fighter flight without losing one, or many times all, of my own planes. With 2 as escorts it's usually a lot easier, but still there's too high of a loss rate on my end without reloads. Minor tweaks, like reducing how far they roll out or decreasing lock-on time for torpedoes (or increasing range of missiles) by just 25% would help tremendously.

[Dranak]

They'd be fine as currently (V18) implemented if they were a bit easier to take down. I've not yet figured out how to consistently take down a 3-fighter flight without losing one, or many times all, of my own planes. With 2 as escorts it's usually a lot easier, but still there's too high of a loss rate on my end without reloads. Minor tweaks, like reducing how far they roll out or decreasing lock-on time for torpedoes (or increasing range of missiles) by just 25% would help tremendously.

3 fighters vs 3 Migs: Each Mig locks one fighter, drops speed to minimum, and sets one torpedo to not fire. Unpause, allow first torpedo to fire and fighter to dodge. Pause, fire second torpedo. Lather, rinse, repeat.

[Max_Caine]

Just like old times.

[Mytheos]

If you do it right, not being negative, you can take down 3 fighter every single time without a loss.

3 foxtrots = easy mode, never loose a plane or take any damage.

3 condors = not hard, just dont make a mistake, will take damage, but no loss.

2 planes with one being a condor = very tricky can be done, but if not perfectly can result in lost, but if done perfectly still results in damage to the condor at least.

Based on this, its more a situation of spending enough time to learn how to do it right vs increasing rewards and adding more complexity to the already problematic and unfinished economy balance.

It can take a LOT of time to learn how to do it with minimal damage or no loss, but I'd say any average player could have it figured out in an hour if they had an Air Combat simulator and could choose different combination of planes vs different combinations of UFOs.

We currently just have Save/Load. And that might take many hours to learn it that way.

Yeah it does place an oddly high requirement on AC essentially asking you to spend perhaps many hours to master it before you can play the game.

Which is why Immortal Plane War began...

[Jean-Luc]

Actually, getting an automatic salvage reward for shooting down fighters might not be a bad idea regardless of interceptor mechanics. Maybe like 10k per fighter (30k for a whole wing) and 15-20k per heavy fighter, etc. Whatever is "balanced".

Give a bit more incentive to go after them rather than cower in the hangar.

[DNK]

3 fighters vs 3 Migs: Each Mig locks one fighter, drops speed to minimum, and sets one torpedo to not fire. Unpause, allow first torpedo to fire and fighter to dodge. Pause, fire second torpedo. Lather, rinse, repeat.

I usually drop speed to minimum, beam the target, then fire off torpedoes one every second. The problem with your approach is that the fighters can dodge multiple times. Usually it's the 3rd and 4th torpedoes that hit, meaning I have to wait several seconds to launch them all. It's usually very hard to get the Foxtrots out of range of the fighters before the Foxtrots' missiles hit, meaning they get shot down often even when they shoot down the fighters also.

That said, the missiles are really slow in this game. It's another one of those "simple fixes" where an extra/less 25% to missile speed or range would make a huge difficulty difference and negate the need for whole new mechanics (not naming any in particular...). As it stands, it's very intolerant of minor timing mistakes.

[Dranak]

I usually drop speed to minimum, beam the target, then fire off torpedoes one every second. The problem with your approach is that the fighters can dodge multiple times. Usually it's the 3rd and 4th torpedoes that hit, meaning I have to wait several seconds to launch them all. It's usually very hard to get the Foxtrots out of range of the fighters before the Foxtrots' missiles hit, meaning they get shot down often even when they shoot down the fighters also.

That said, the missiles are really slow in this game. It's another one of those "simple fixes" where an extra/less 25% to missile speed or range would make a huge difficulty difference and negate the need for whole new mechanics (not naming any in particular...). As it stands, it's very intolerant of minor timing mistakes.

You're the second person to tell me that what I do 100% of the time without fail doesn't work. If you fire one torpedo to force the roll, and then a second as the roll completes you will ALWAYS hit the fighter before it comes into range of a Foxtrot. You're being highly inefficient by spamming torpedos at fighters.