Pacing?

[Ishantil]

So I've researched everything I have available so far, and I'm just taking down UFO after UFO of the same exact things.

Lizardmen and Sectoids with plasma pistols.

When do the new enemies and guns show up?

[thothkins]

what's your game date?

[Ishantil]

I'm seeing mediums and escorted normal scouts now. I can't touch a medium. Can't even scratch it. Not sure exactly what I'm supposed to do except lose...all the time. Which is dumb. It oneshots fighters. Or very nearly.

Hell, with the lethality of the air combat, without automagically regenerating planes, there wouldn't be a point to playing the game. You'd lose a squadron of fighters and reload a save. I guess that's the point? I never played X-COM like that.

I'm not playing in ironman style, but I don't savescum because I think it's stupid. However, the balance in this game is completely off. The air combat is retardedly unbalanced towards the aliens. I'd need to be able to deliver 10-12 fighters to take one down. And it would probably kill most of them.

I guess I'm supposed to save before every air combat, and if I don't land a perfect game, reload? That's not very fun. Not at all.

EDIT: It would have been nice to introduce the standard Scouts for at least ten days before throwing in the mediums. At least then the transition wouldn't be quite so jarring. By knowing that you are at least researching power sources, you know that new aircraft aren't that far off, and it doesn't seem so hopeless (and thus frustrating). Without that tidbit, you are frustrated by the fact that you have nothing that can engage the enemy. Which isn't fun.

Edited July 27, 2013 by Ishantil

[Ishantil]

The transition is jarring, mainly. I went from being able to completely trounce the little tiny ones to not being able to dent a medium and losing all my aricraft even attempting it. I can take down a Light Scout, or a (standard) Scout, but nothing bigger.

Also, why nothing about the UFO engines and stuff? The Scout is certainly large enough to have a reactor and need one. Where the hell's the research into any of the UFO tech?

UPDATE: I'm guessing I was just unlucky with my first (standard) Scout, I just downed another one and got a reactor and some Muguffanium...er...Eleri...er...Alenium.

Now we're cooking.

Edited July 27, 2013 by Ishantil

[GizmoGomez]

I suggest MiGs with torpedoes. That'll scratch them. Also, damage lingers from engagement to engagement. This means you can fly out there and unload torpedoes, and then disengage and fly back later with more torpedoes.

[thothkins]

The transition is jarring, mainly. I went from being able to completely trounce the little tiny ones to not being able to dent a medium and losing all my aricraft even attempting it.

I was pleased that I was taking down the Corvette's as easily as I was when they arrived. Going for a research path that provides Alenium explosives is best. Now the way the research is at present, it's not as though there are parallel paths to choose from

Then, as Gizmo said, put them on a MIG. Make sure the Condors have upgraded to alenium missiles. I had to change them manually for other bases/new craft.

[Ishantil]

I think that the Foxtrot is garbage. It has no internal cannon and is so unmaneuverable that it's basically a two shot torpedo launcher can that only flight in a straight line.

They should have used an F-15C Eagle for the basis of the other aircraft. It's nearly as fast, it can actually turn, carries a huge weapons load, and was easily ready by 1979. I suppose we had to throw the Soviets a bone, but the MiG-31 isn't what I would have chosen. Why not use an Su-27?

By the way, "Unlike the MiG-25, the MiG-31 has an internal cannon, a six-barrel, 23 mm GSh-6-23 with 800 rounds of ammunition, mounted above the starboard main landing gear bay." Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah. Eight hundred rounds. Eight hundred!

The whole point of an aircraft is to put weapons on target. Two missiles and 50 cannon shells is not what that means.

::goes back to poking Xenonaughts::

Oh, and those Alien Heavy Fighters are easily the most dangerous UFO I've encountered so far.

Edited July 28, 2013 by Ishantil

[thothkins]

I think that the Foxtrot is garbage

I prefer "Manoeuvrability challenged"

Once I learned about adjusting speeds, so it wasn't targeted constantly, I enjoyed the difference between it and the Condors. The Foxtrot softens the target up for the others to finish off.

By the time Heavy Fighters come around, I'm sure I've got onto the next tier of missiles, so they aren't anything I recall struggling with. Cue disastrous encounter with 3 of them in 19.5

[ThatSwoleGuy]

I'm not sure if you were expecting to be able to immediately take their fighters down but that would be silly, the aliens are intended to possess technology far more advanced than what the humans have on Earth.

It would be purely silly if you could walk right in and research a few things and blow aliens out of the sky.

The design hit it's mark as well by the way, the intention I think goes along with what I said above; you're supposed to lose a lot.

[thothkins]

the trick for balancing will be to find a player who doesn't savescum all the air combat missions to see how the effect of losing all those missions would have on the overall game.

[ThatSwoleGuy]

the trick for balancing will be to find a player who doesn't savescum all the air combat missions to see how the effect of losing all those missions would have on the overall game.

Pretty much this, I play on ironman my self and while I've lost aircraft I've won air engagements as well, now to be honest I've only had several playthroughs of the early game so far and overall I've not had the game long.

My intent is to make sure no one causes knee-jerk nerfs to things that are balanced as intended.

All this to say again, I think it's the intent that the alien aircraft dominate your own.

[Ishantil]

That's how I normally would play. But the timetable in Xenonaughts is pretty tight. After I started consistently losing all three craft nearly every battle, I started saving before every air combat encounter. Which defeats the whole point of even offering the "3 day magic planes". I just reload the game.

If the game isn't fun, that kind of defeats the purpose, doesn't it? I'm not having much fun with air combat any more. But I think I've probably pounded that subject at length.

What I'd rather see is more suggestions on better balance.

Edited July 29, 2013 by Ishantil

[ThatSwoleGuy]

Perhaps the difficulty is a bit much for you then?

I'm not attempting to get a rise out of you if that's what it seems but I find the air combat to be pretty well designed.

If you're running 3 condors and not using hit and run tactics then you can expect to not do so well. The tech progression has served me quite well as I've played, seems to me just as you feel the aliens are starting to melt you, you get something that allows you to slowly push on for tactical victories.

Edit:

To respond to your edit I'm not sure the air combat is supposed to be as fun as ground combat, it seems to be more of a simulator, if they wanted to somehow change it to real-time or update the tactical features I'd be fine with that but as of now it's definitely balanced imo.

Sometimes you just shouldn't engage.

Edited July 29, 2013 by ThatSwoleGuy

[Ishantil]

ThatSwoleGuy, have you played 19.5? Have you gotten to the medium UFOs yet? Because I'm not talking about downing Light Scouts.

Also, for the record, I know you are not trying to get a rise out of me. I appreciate you joining the discussion. I want to welcome as many different viewpoints as possible. By all means, please state your opinion!

-----

The point of this game is shoot down UFOs and clean them out so you can loot them. That's a primary game mechanic. It cannot be avoided, nor should it be. There are three ways to make money in the game: doing missions (which means selling off existing weaponry), selling items for profit (only items looted from UFOs actually make you money, as far as I know) and council funding.

All of these are directly linked to shooting down UFOs, of course.

In order to get new fighter aircraft, I need to down a medium (as far as I can tell). I have probably engaged mediums ten different times. I'm getting better at it, but after losing ten times in a row with total annihilation, I realized that I was so over matched, I didn't see a way to win. I know other people are winning at the air combat against medium UFOs, but I have yet to decrypt whatever magic they are using.

Nevertheless, as it stands, the air combat preventing me from playing the rest of the game.

-------

I suggested decoupling the air combat difficulty in another post. That way people who like it as is can play it as is, and those of us who are having trouble with it can play it on an easier difficulty.

[ThatSwoleGuy]

The last thing you said about an air difficulty toggle wouldn't be half bad and I can't imagine it would take long to do.

So far I've made it to the stage where you start seeing fighters on a few different occasions (surrendering so that I could use different strategy) and I've taken only 1 down in all honesty. I will for sure report back in a bit when my save gathers some age (at work now).

I have been playing on Ironman-2nd hardest difficulty as well and I've only had one plane loss to combat thus far.

[Ishantil]

Ah, okay, so you haven't gotten to medium UFOs and heavy fighters yet. I actually rather enjoyed the air combat until that time.

I'm interested in hearing what you have to say about it.

[Dranak]

The biggest problem I see with air combat currently is that it's hard until you figure it ou, at which point it becomes absolutely trivial.

[Queamin]

The biggest problem I see with air combat currently is that it's hard until you figure it ou, at which point it becomes absolutely trivial.

I agree and it is so messed up that we got planes that cannot die now and a auto resolve button now, I really don't know what the dev are thinking.

Going for xcom94 where air combat was a small part needing to stack up planes only really on battleships to where we are now needing muti planes for a scout doesn't make sense.

[ThatSwoleGuy]

Well I think it's crap that you can only send 3 planes to an engagement, I have no problem hit and running all the way home but it would be cool if they buffed the alien strength a TAD more and then allowed you to take maybe 8 planes. Micromanaging is doable with the pause as well.

[ThatSwoleGuy]

It should be noted that I'm playing on the standard stable 18v and I am sending planes to let loose their rockets and run.

[thothkins]

I guess I have more practice to get in. I don't find it trivial yet

With so many looking for air combat to be balanced downwards, it's not likely that more planes would be added into the air combat.

[Chris]

Yeah. The air combat isn't what I was hoping for when we first designed the game. I don't think that detailed a combat model works very well in an X-Com game. As Dranak says, it's a bad combination of being hard to learn and quite abusable once you know how.

If I did the game over I'd just rip out the air combat and have the standard X-Com-style air combat...but it's too integrated into the game now (if it was removed, you'd have to cut out a lot of the UFOs and interceptors too as they just wouldn't have any differentiation). Also people hate it when you give them a feature and take it away, so I don't think removing the existing model is a viable choice any more either.

Hence, you get auto-resolve which can at least take into account the different type of UFO against different type of interceptors for those that don't like playing the combat. Maybe we'll dream up something new once the new UI is done...but we'll see.

[Ishantil]

I appreciate you looking into the thread, Chris. I think there's certainly some remaining balance options available.

[Chris]

That's for Aaron to do. He has more faith in the existing mechanics than I do

[TheTuninator]

If worst comes to worst, you can always just drop the difficulty of the air engagements substantially for release by nerfing the UFOs a bit. It's not like X-COM had very difficult air battles as long as you brought the right stuff, after all. People will be comparing Xenonauts to X-COM, and as long as the air combat isn't punishingly difficult it should stack up favorably; seeing your planes and the UFOs fly around on a grid is a lot more satisfying than X-COM's presentation even if all you do is click "fire missiles" at the appropriate time.

Edited July 30, 2013 by TheTuninator