Foxtrot needs some love

[Lorebot]

I'm not sure what build removed 2 of the Foxtrot's hardpoints or what explanation was given for it but after a couple weeks of dealing with the change I'm still having trouble with it. The Foxtrot really lost a ton of utility and effectiveness because of that change. It helped balance the Foxtrot in the early game, but it's turned it into a sitting duck once the fighter escorts start showing up. It's also a huge problem once the larger alien ships start coming because you just can't carry enough torpedoes to bring them down without bringing only Foxtrots to the fight...and if you do they'll usually just get picked off by fighters.

I'm sure that air combat is still being balanced, as is much of the game, but the Foxtrot really needs those extra hardpoints back, even if they're limited to only carrying missiles with them. Especially considering that you spend a lot of time and resources gaining access to them. They can't evade and have extremely limited payload even with 4 hardpoints.

Edited July 28, 2013 by Lorebot

[thothkins]

I generally only ever have enough money (up to January in 19.4) to have 1 Foxtrot per base. So eventually I pick my fights.

However adjusting the speed of the Foxtrot, prevents it being picked off first. It has a longer range, so there's no need to rush it nose cone first into oncoming UFOs.

Also, the Condors should be the ones taking care of the UFO escorts. If they can't - well I did say I pick my fights. There's always tactical withdrawal to return again if it needs two attempts to take down the UFOs.

The reduced refuelling times are a real bonus for this.

The Foxtrot still has my love

[Lorebot]

I too only use 1 Foxtrot per base, they're too expensive to do otherwise without cheating. Which I've done just to see how a wing with more than one would perform against larger ships...the results weren't pretty. Without Condor cover and only 2 hardpoints you end up wasting all your torps taking out fighters, 1 to make them dodge and the 2nd to finish them while they can't get out of the way.

The reduced refueling times are great, but sending a lone Foxtrot back into a fight because you can't afford to wait for the Condors to refuel tends to get the Fox killed when a flight of fighters comes out of no where...which happens often enough that I've just stopped trying to send the Fox in solo to finish a fight.

[thothkins]

I let the condors worry about the fighters (splitting up your craft works well to prevent firing cones getting in the way).

[Lorebot]

I think you misunderstood my reply.

I let the Condors handle the fighters, but can't dish out enough damage to kill the larger ships with only 2 hardpoints on the Foxtrot.

If I do everything I can and then head back to base to rearm, the Foxtrot refuels way faster than the Condors. So in order to prevent the alien ship from escaping I send the Fox back alone to finish the job, which it can if the phantom fighter bug doesn't hit me...which it invariably does. If by some miracle the bug doesn't occur and I'm able to kill the alien ship the lone Foxtrot usually get attacked by a wing of alien interceptors on its way back to base and dies a fiery death without Condors to back it up. Sometimes the fighters will attack the Foxtrot before it even gets to the alien ship to finish it off...or worse they show up while the Fox is tailing the ship till it's over land...

The result being that I just don't send the Foxtrot out solo and about half the alien ships I attack and don't kill in the first engagement escape because I have to wait for Condors to be refueled before sending the squadron back out to finish the job.

[Dranak]

Foxtrots are actually pretty OP if you build only foxtrots and control them well. I literally build only Foxtrots until I start building Marauders, and only take damage from them if I completely mess up.

[Lorebot]

I'm not sure how you'd be able to build so many of them. I'm not too bad at the game and I can barely afford to build gear for my soldiers, and I certainly wouldn't have time to spend on that much construction.

I tend to build 1 Foxtrot per base and use Condors for support. Condors may not be as good, but they're cheaper and I don't need to devote manufacturing to them.

I'll agree that a wing of Foxtrots can be pretty devastating if used skillfully, but having 3 of them at every base is a huge investment in cash and production time that could be better spent building armor and weapons for your soldiers. But even used to their full potential a wing of Foxtrots just doesn't carry enough damage to take out a medium or larger alien ship in a single engagement if it's got an escort, and they usually do.

[Ishantil]

How does the Foxtrot refueling faster than a Condor make any sense at all?

[Lorebot]

How does the Foxtrot refueling faster than a Condor make any sense at all?

It doesn't...it's not using an Alenium reactor as a power source it's still using normal jet fuel and it would conceivably have larger fuel tanks since it's a larger craft with a longer range and a greater top speed than the Condor. But then a Condor taking 8 hours to refuel is in itself confusing...such planes can refuel midair in 30 minutes or less and they can generally refuel even faster on the ground, though that requires actually landing and then taking off again which makes ground refueling slower just because of the extra steps involved.

[Dranak]

I'm not sure how you'd be able to build so many of them. I'm not too bad at the game and I can barely afford to build gear for my soldiers, and I certainly wouldn't have time to spend on that much construction.

I tend to build 1 Foxtrot per base and use Condors for support. Condors may not be as good, but they're cheaper and I don't need to devote manufacturing to them.

I'll agree that a wing of Foxtrots can be pretty devastating if used skillfully, but having 3 of them at every base is a huge investment in cash and production time that could be better spent building armor and weapons for your soldiers. But even used to their full potential a wing of Foxtrots just doesn't carry enough damage to take out a medium or larger alien ship in a single engagement if it's got an escort, and they usually do.

You do it by building 0 ground equipment until you have at least two bases with at least three Foxtrots each, and then start building plasma weapons which should leave you enough time to get 1-2 squads fully geared before stopping ground production again to start building marauders. I also decomission my starting Condors to free hangar space (it's cheaper than building extra hangars since they rapidly become obsolete).

[WalrusJones]

If they wanted to bring the foxtrots power level down, without sacrificing the utility, replacing the left wing torpedo with a light missile would have brought its damage levels to roughly the same level, but would have left a much more interesting craft to fly and use.

(15% less overall damage, but more potential for trickery in outsmarting enemy ships defenses.)

[Queamin]

You do it by building 0 ground equipment until you have at least two bases with at least three Foxtrots each, and then start building plasma weapons which should leave you enough time to get 1-2 squads fully geared before stopping ground production again to start building marauders. I also decomission my starting Condors to free hangar space (it's cheaper than building extra hangars since they rapidly become obsolete).

And this is what pisses me off about air combat it is meant to be a small part of the game and it effect almost everything what is the point in skipping lasers and early armour just to get air combat up to speed, it almost makes air combat more important than ground combat because if you get behind the curve of advancement of alien craft you almost screwed.

I don't like the option of having to over look ground combat items for months just to get on a level playing field in air combat.

[svidangel]

Damn, and I was hoping this thread would resolve my persistent search for the answer to what the aeronautical version of bestiality is called.

-1 for misleading title.

Also, air combat finance decoupling. Nuff said.

[Lorebot]

And this is what pisses me off about air combat it is meant to be a small part of the game and it effect almost everything what is the point in skipping lasers and early armour just to get air combat up to speed, it almost makes air combat more important than ground combat because if you get behind the curve of advancement of alien craft you almost screwed.

I don't like the option of having to over look ground combat items for months just to get on a level playing field in air combat.

Air combat is a lot more intensive and has a much higher priority than previous games. I wouldn't mind if it didn't require so much investment and wasn't such a comparatively small part of the game. That's part of the reason I think the Foxtrot needs to be better than it is in 19.5. I don't feel like the expense in research, manufacturing, and funding shouldn't give you a big step up in air combat. I don't think I'd ever do it, but investing in full wings of Foxtrots should be a major advantage in the early game and should be viable until you get another craft that can carry heavy weapons.

I think one of the major difficulties the devs are going to face in balancing not just Air combat, but ground combat as well is that ammunition is free and in infinite supply. In past games balance was achieved not just through the effectiveness of equipment, but how much it cost to keep your troops supplied with that equipment. Having to supply my aircraft with missiles meant having to be picky with what targets I'd spend my heavy missiles on, if I don't need to pay for them and they're effectively as accurate as the smaller missiles when you know how to use them there's no reason not to use heavy missiles on every target. Getting laser weapons in EU1994 was a huge advantage just because ammo was free and infinite, it kept them viable through the entire game even when their damage wasn't the best because it meant not having to spend Ellerium and manufacturing time replacing plasma clips.

I think the best thing that the Devs could do right now to help balance air combat is to make us have to spend time building the Alenium missiles and torpedoes instead of just giving them to us for free, same with the alenium, stun, and electro grenades. Give us the standard human ammos for free, but make us have to invest manufacturing time, money, and maybe even alenium to build the upgraded stuff. Same could be said for the advanced ground combat weapon ammo, it doesn't make much sense to me that building the clips for the laser or plasma weapons would be so simple as to not require manufacturing and allow us access to an infinite supply. It also doesn't make a lot of sense to me that they would not just build their weapons to accept the alien clips. I understand having to build human weapons to allow human soldiers to use them more easily, but why would they waste time designing something that's already fully functional, readily available, and doesn't require a different design to use well? But perhaps that all deserves its own thread?

[svidangel]

That will just slow us down, but it won't fix the basic problem with two otherwise independent systems being coupled by finances.

[Lorebot]

Personally I don't think anything should be completely independent of finances. Financing was a key balance point of all the X-Com games and it's a very effective tool for the job. Making a weapon extremely effective and then making it extremely expensive helped make it something you'd only use in special circumstances instead of all the time. There's a reason grenades are over powered in the recent builds, they're free and infinite. Same goes for the Foxtrot having been reduced to 2 heavy hardpoints, 4 alenium torps could solve any problem you'd come across and you didn't have to worry about how much they cost...they're free and infinite.

It's difficult to balance any system that allows for costless and unending resources because the only real limiting factor you have left to adjust is time. You can't adjust how rare or expensive an item is, you can only adjust how many you need to use to get the desired effect. That generally leads to great imbalance because there's almost always a way to play the system to get what you want when you want it regardless of the intent of the person designing the system.

[Mordobb]

Not willing to piss in the new foxtrot parade but aereal nedd really some tweaking.

8 hour to refuel any plane ? really ? Not even a galaxy take 1/4 of that time this is plainly ridiculous.

2 weapons only? really ? Why bother a new plane ? retrofit the condor one more time and pronto. Foxtrot existence doesn t make sense anymore.

You can deal with the foxbloat (Nickname fitting what they have become) and bother aliens but it isn t fun nor healthy.

For them to be effective agaisn t larger ship you need loads of them to come wave after wave, unles you want to loose some condors.

They are only usefull once in they life to take an alenium reactor then throw them down the toilet and wait for marauders.

If needed, pick lower tier ufos with condors to maintain the cash flow.

Aerial is good but early tier, really need to be revisited to make sense and be great.

The pick one and follow UFO tactic lead to a bait tactic to bring the ennemy down witohut hassle, only by exeption they pick a one on one tactic.

I didn t like the non dying ship feature. once blown out of the sky, its over. Build/buy another one, period, especially in insane, this look fit for the "please don t hurt me" difficulty.

The only acceptable situation would be out of fuel were the plane would find a divert airbase and then some logistic would have to be deployed to refuel it and this would greatly delay its return, but no more than bying another(4/5 days)....this make the god of gaming developers cry.

[Lorebot]

Even the UFO series didn't allow you infinite ammo, and it had no financing at all. No money at all, but your available ammo was limited by the number of magazines you had for any given weapon. The magazines were filled with ammo for free, but how many you had was dependent on how many you found during the game. Mags for better weapons were more rare and thus the amount of ammo you could bring with you on your missions was always limited. And while you could manufacture magazines for the alien weapons you couldn't manufacture mags for the human weapons which meant you had to decide if it was worth bringing more than 1 of some of the very good human weapons because you'd have to divide your magazines between more soldiers if you did.

Balancing a game isn't easy and reducing the ways you have to balance it only makes things more difficult. The 4 key points of balance that every game uses in some fashion are cost, availability, effectiveness, and portability. What do you need to spend to get the item? How many of the item can you get? How well does the item perform? How many can you use at a single time? An item that's cheap and easily available should also be weak and easily carried. Items that are strong need to be either expensive, rare, difficult to deploy, or some combination there of. It's like trying to build a table or a chair, it's possible to do with only 3 legs, but the positioning of those legs is extremely important and if any 1 of them break it falls because 2 alone can't support it. It's far easier to build furniture with 4 legs because it allows a much greater tolerance for error.

[svidangel]

I never wanted them to be independent of finances.

http://www.goldhawkinteractive.com/forums/showthread.php/6481-Decoupling-Air-Combat-and-it-s-Financing?highlight=decoupling