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Missile Defences - or any other kind


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I've not bothered with building base defences.

Partly, it's because I need every cent to build other things. Partly, it's because I like getting the loot from all the aliens.

But for this post, it's partly because I've never been that convinced they do enough damage to justify their use. Has anyone else been using them in Xenonauts. If so, do you notice a marked improvement in defending your bases.

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I do, and I have. Spotted a landing ship headed towards a base of mine, which had one laser battery. I intercepted it, which went badly, with 55% health on the landship left. My laser battery dropped it from 55% to 22%. In the subsequent base defence mission, I faced 5 Sebillian soliders.

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now that's good to know. Thanks Max. There has been quite a few bases attacks in the last few builds, so I may want to be a bit more prepared in Xenonauts, that I would have been otherwise.

It does make sense. If they know where you are, why wouldn't they keep attacking it regularly? Not so sure about it as Gameplay though, although at least the number seem to have gone down.

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What is a reasonable number of base assaults? 2 per month? more? less?

The ones that annoy me are the ones that happen while I'm out on a mission. the cleaning staff armed with brooms have to take down the invading forces. I've learned to watch everything in a UFO wave.

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If I were wishing on a star, I'd assign a "noise" percentage to each base, and increment that "noise" each time aircraft flew out on a sortie. The higher the percentage, the more likely a base assault mission would take place in the next wave for that base and when the mission happened, I'd then reset the percentage to zero. I'd also make sure the "noise" value was visible (perhaps as a thermometer?). Finally, I'd allow the "noise" value to decrease as well as increase. That way, the number of times a base is assaulted is a function of how many ops the player chooses to run from it. But the chances of that happening are next to zero.

Anyway, I've now got two batteries running and am about to make the leap into plasma techology. I think I'll deliberately allow a ship to assault my base to see how those puppies operate.

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I do, and I have. Spotted a landing ship headed towards a base of mine, which had one laser battery. I intercepted it, which went badly, with 55% health on the landship left. My laser battery dropped it from 55% to 22%. In the subsequent base defence mission, I faced 5 Sebillian soliders.

I haven't been attacked yet, so I'm not sure how many xenos invade your base in an undamaged UFO. But what is the point of defense systems if the ship still manages to get to the base? Unless they are attacking with 20+ xenos which gets reduced to 5 I'm not sure I see the benefit of building them, because as thothkins said, their loot is really nice to have. Besides, you save even more money by not building and maintaining the things, and space in your base for more other buildings.

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The point is if a UFO is damaged by base defences, it looses a percentage of the troops it is carrying. On the base defence I mention, my chinook had already been sent out to investigate a downed UFO, and the garrison at home comprised of 7 guys, all who were wounded and had basic gear (as the good stuff had been issued to my outgoing squad). By damaging the landing ship, I reduced the number of invading aliens from OMG Plasma Cannons to manageable. As UFOs are not automatically detected the moment they enter radar range, it is entirely possible to have a situation where you send your A squad out, and then frantically try and re-route it as the enemy UFO closes in.

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Although it has been toned down, I went from missions with at most 6 aliens, straight into defending my base from 21 (at higher ranks too) a few builds ago. It was a great mission, actually, but I'd not want to do it too often.

Interesting to hear the "noise" theory. It's how I actually play the game. If a UFO is hovering anywhere near one of my bases, I don't launch. The fear being that it will spot the activity. The now, bigger, fear is that it wins by default as I only have one manned base now. So, I'd be a very keen to see such a mechanic in the game.

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It's amusing to note that during a base defence, everyone defends. Any troopers resting up in medbay are yanked out of their beds, handed a rifle and told to move their ass.

@thothkins, yeah, it'd be a lovely idea.. but I'm guessing it would need signifcant changes to the Geoscape, and we'd need to lay in another truck of Prozac for Aaron and Chris.

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Oh, would they even notice another one in the pile these days :)

I wonder why I'm playing the game by rules it doesn't even have :) How do aliens detect your base in the first place?

I hope this doesn't end up like terror missions, where I try not to damage the buildings too much in case I upset the locals. Like the game bothers.

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Great :) So my tactic to avoid something doesn't exist and my hope that the something didn't exist anyway was wrong :)

Right. Off to the builders to chat about those laser turrets and about how to train up my new organisation JANE (Janitors Against Naughty Extraterrestrials)

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